We are a U.S. non-profit (a 501(c)(3) organization), philanthropic organization and Fair Trade Federation member, and we also are chartered by the Palestinian Authority to bring together Muslims, Jews, and Christians for friendship and peace.  We have a self-help project that helps sustain economically the tradition of Palestinian craftsmanship.  The Hebron Embroidery Project is composed almost entirely of fine craftswomen who are the sole support of their families and who carry on their ancient tradition of beautiful EMBROIDERY.  These impoverished but skillful women come from the Palestinian villages around the holy city of Hebron: Beit Kahel, Sum'ua, Yatta, Idna, Beni Naim, and others.  Some of them work at night after the children are asleep; others work while the children are at school.  The older, unmarried daughters often help their mothers with the embroidery, which in this way is taught and passed down through the generations.

     The women cross-stitch the beautiful embroidery in traditional Palestinian patterns such as the moon, the cedar tree, or the Byzantine cross.  Each village has distinctive patterns.  The Hebron area is noted especially for its flower, bird, and animal patterns, which are not found elsewhere in Palestine.  Most of the patterns in the pillows and wall hangings come from the beautiful embroidered dresses that older women in the villages wear whenever they leave their homes.  The flower patterns have been used since the 1940s, and the others for at least 150 years.

     The Friendship and Peace Society  distributes the embroidery.  The price you pay for a pillow, dress, shawl, or wall hanging is what the woman who made it has been paid, plus our shipping, handling, and advertising costs. We are all volunteers and have only one paid employee--the Palestinian village woman coordinator, who gives out the work that you order, pays the women, and ships the embroidery to the U.S.  A medium-sized pillow, which costs you only $60, may take a woman thirty hours to make - when she is not caring for her children.  Until fairly recently, when a young woman from Hebron got married, she made nine dowry pillows to present to the bridegroom's family as evidence of her skill and her respect for her cultural tradition.

    We have some items on hand that we can ship immediately, and you can order anything in our on-line catalog or our printed catalog with a two to three month delivery date.  The material on which most of the embroidery is worked is color-fast cotton, most of it Aida embroidery cloth, but some of it is handmade cloth from the Noor Al Hussein Foundation in Jordan.  The embroidery thread is DMC.  Everything is fully hand washable.