We buy our goods from various places – ceramics from Hebron, soap from the village of Taybeh in the West Bank, olive wood crafts from Bethlehem, hand embroidered items from village cooperatives and refugee camps, for example.
We sell mainly at stalls, craft fairs, coffee mornings, charity events and churches. By buying our products, you are helping to provide an income for individuals and families with little or no means of support, including people in refugee camps, and assisting charities and community groups which provide for young children, elderly and disabled people.
We also give talks at events and presentations on request to help raise awareness of the situation in the Holy Land.
We are a small group of volunteers in the West of Scotland – non-sectarian and non-political. Through our policy of Buy, Sell, Tell and Give we aim to promote a wider understanding of the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and support those people there who are in the greatest need.
History
In 2004 Juliet and Don Robb and their daughter-in-law Erica were visiting Jerusalem, trying to gain some insight into the conflict in Palestine. They were sitting on the terrace of St Andrew’s Church of Scotland Church, Jerusalem with the church’s then minister The Reverend C. Musgrave who said to them,“Don’t be content with just seeing the problems, what are you going to do about them?”
And so, the idea of Olive Tree was born. We would BUY Palestinian crafts, SELL locally, TELL the Palestinian narrative and GIVE all profits/proceeds back to the needy in Palestine. EASY?!!
Somehow the idea became a reality with the help of like-minded friends who each gave generously to get things started.
In the early days procuring suitable crafts was an adventure! Erica returned to Jerusalem with the sole remit of “procuring” and in due course and with good advice we gradually found reliable ceramics in Hebron, wonderful olive wood from a large FT cooperative in Bethlehem, beautiful embroidery from impoverished villages, felts from L‘Arche Community, Bethlehem, Olive Oil drums from Taybeh, and silver jewellery from sources in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. With a reliable coordinator in Bethlehem our O. T. family was complete!
We started small with sale stalls in churches and at coffee mornings. We have always felt it was important to make personal connections with both our suppliers and the projects we were supporting and some of us have been lucky enough to visit them on several occasions.
Over the years we have grown, we now have a steering group of nine people and a wider group of loyal supporters. We hold around 50 stalls per year. Many of our first suppliers remain the same but Taybeh’s leaky olive oil drums have been replaced by products from Zaytoun!
We can now donate thousands each year, in a way never thought possible but it is of course never enough. School fees for an impoverished family, medical and dental fees, computers, a wheelchair, skills training, support for special needs centres and regular gifts to groups such as Medical Aid for Palestine and Embrace are all part of our giving programme.
We have enhanced the Tell part of our work by hosting speakers from organisations such as Tent of Nations, Hebron International Resources Network (HIRN) and Caritas Jerusalem.
