Over 40 of us travelled to Manchester for the 2008 Palestine Lives festival.

We ran a multi purpose stall: with a display about the Sheffield Palestine women's Scholarship Fund, a display about the Break the siege of Gaza boat project and scarves and mugs to raise funds for our children's projects in Gaza.

The stall did really well - we sold 24 mugs and also all the scarves we took (we could have sold more) - we also provided people with Palestinian flags (large and small) for the march and lots of people gave us a donation to buy their flags.

The scholarship fund received one single fantastic donation of £300, which is over halfway to providing a new scholarship for this September!

The display on break the siege the boat to Gaza attracted loads of attention and interest too - someone from Manchester is going to be on the boat and with the interest generated by our display he collected quite a bit of sponsorship money.

We also had the huge 30 metre flag with us which was carried on the march by about 20 people. Although the event was not as big as the Sheffield event it was a decent size and had a really good atmosphere about it - these sorts of events are a great opportunity for Palestinians living in exile in the UK to see the depth of support for the Palestinian casue and for us all to appreciate aspects of Palestinian culture, including the Al Zaytouna danke group and some Arab musicians.

Musheir did a great speech and then he and his nephew Mohammad made mobile phone contact with meetings being held in Jabalia and Khan Younis  and we all chanted messages of support to people in Gaza - which was a very inspiring moment for us all. We have heard that our messags meant a lot to those who heard them in Gaza.

By the way, Al Zaytouna will be dancing in Bakewell on Saturday 28th June at the international day of dance - the event is free and throughout Bakewell from 11.30 til 4.30 p.m.  Al Zaytouna will be dancing at 1 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. http://www.bakewelldayofdance.co.uk