The Lajee Center is a community-based grassroots center that engages creatively with new generations of Palestinians as they continue their ongoing struggle for justice and rights for Palestine. It was established in the Aida Refugee Camp in 2001, with active members also mobilizing from the Dheisheh and Al-Azza Refugee Camps, as well as the cities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, and Ad-Doha. The Center’s overarching goal is to provide refugee youth with cultural educational, social, and developmental opportunities. 

With funding from the MBI, the Lajee Center will launch their latest coalition, the Palestinian Resilience Research Collective. This is a collaboration involving Palestinian community health workers who will develop and publish a training manual for locally-based community health workers called Existing in the Crossfires: Cultivating Trees of Sumoud Beyond the Wall – a Psychosocial Workbook. As a workbook containing lessons from years of communal lived experiences and fieldwork, Existing in the Crossfires will become an invaluable resource for knowledge and solidarity.