The office

Zina is sitting at her desk, trying to act out the entire band of the song playing on her computer, franticly switching between her pretend flute, pretend drums and pretend symbols. One day, the bosses left early, and pretty soon, the office broke into an impromptu dance party.

Despite the social atmosphere, it's clear that everyone works hard. Hardly anyone leaves at five when the work day is officially over. Majd tells me that when they have a proposal, it's not rare for the directors to stay in the office late into the night in order to make sure everything is properly written, and I often see Majd doing work for the organization in her time off. More importantly, she isn't resentful about it.

One night, I met the Chairman of the organization. He was surprisingly young and didn't look like the stiff businessman I would have imagined. He was also obviously far more concerned with helping the disadvantaged than with making money. He told me that four of the seven or so people working in the Ramallah office are co-founders of the organization, so their passion makes sense.

“We are like a family,” Majd tells me. Whenever someone has a birthday, they get a cake. There's a list in the kitchen assigning dish duty, and even the CEO has a turn. When a new center was being established, the person in charge of it asked for help, and the employees personally contributed hundreds of dollars, a camera, their days off.

Right now, there is no communications officer, which works out great for me, because it means there's lots to do. My introduction to the organization and its activities consisted of editing reports and grant proposals. Soon, I was given the assignment of writing the proposal for the project they're curently developing. While occasionally frustrating—especially at the beginning when they hadn't really solidified their ideas, and therefore couldn't give me clear instructions—it's also quite interesting to see the project form, and to have such a large stake in the process as a volunteer. I asked my supervisor if he would be around tomorrow to look over my ideas of the project objectives, and he told me, “Just write your ideas. I told you my ideas, and now this part is yours.”