Welcome New Member: Mahali khotle

Martha & Mahali

Thanks to Martha & Irwin for organizing the Information table on 7/23 at the Farmers Market (good location, Martha!).
I would like to officially welcome our newest member Ms. Mahali Khotle who agreed to join the IT team (Cylvanna and Ismail) to become the Administrator of our Facebbok page.... Mahali is originally from Lesotho.

Our August meeting will be on 8/6 following the table @1 pm at Jones Library (43 Amity Street)... I sent invitation to all our list members via facebook... pls RSVP by 8/4 in order to determine the room size of the meeting.

Our agenda will be a follow-up on previous meeting and in addition to start planning the Dec 10th event of the Human Rights Day; and to brinstorm ideas on the Iran Case assigned to our group.

Thanks
mohamed elgadi,

Group Coordinator

Sami Adam & Child Soldiers in Chad

Sami, 7 years old, is an African-American child who lives with his family in Saudi Arabia and is visiting Amherst this Summer. last Sat, he joined his friend Cylvanna, our youngest Amnesty member in Amherst, to organize the bi-weekly information table in downtown Amherst at the Farmers Market.

He atentatively listened to Cylavanna updating him on each petition at the table and it seemed that a particular one captured his attention more. This was the one asking President Obama to revoke a waiver to Chad that let the country continues to recruit underage combatants in the refugees camps in Eastern Chad (read more here). Sami managed to convince 7 visitors to Amnesty Table to sign this petition. "I will ask more people to sign the petition so we can send it to President Obama before I go back to Saudi Arabia" he told me at the end of the day.

Thank you all again for keeping this Tabling activity rolling...

Happy 4th of July...

The Dynamic Team of 7/2/11 Table

Our Amnesty Table this week was especially interesting...Thanks to coordinating team led by Ismail Farah, Bassil, Aysar, and Cylvanna...

The young team added more fun to the Amherst Farmers Market when they walked around and gave away the popular Amnesty pin "Rights for All" while asking people to stop by the table to sign petitions.

Ayssar, middle, showing off his anti-torture sticker

It was a fun and brillinat idea, most impotantly, it came from them. The young Ayssar posted the AI anti-torture sticker on his front shirt while he runs around the Commons in downtown Amherst. "it was fun. Can we come again next week Dad?" Bassil asked his father while they were folding up the table at the end of the day. Many people stopped by to check our new materials and to inquire about the new 3 Petitions (India, Chad, and Erirea). The Team managed to fill one page of each petition in addition to collect $6 of donations.

Special thanks to Ismail Farah, a refugee artist from Sudan, who took the day-off his work to organize the table.

Our next table will be on 7/16 and will be organized by by 2 local members and another 2 International members who will be visiting that week.