Beirut or bust

Five Leaves' friends (and the many more friends of Peter Mortimer) will know that he brought a group of children from Shatila Palestinian refugee camp to the North East last year and plans were in place to bring another group in February. Money had been raised, venues had been booked (and we were gearing up to another big sale of his Camp Shatila book), and everything was in order. The perils of organising theatre between two places 3,000 miles apart became apparent when the UNRWA, which runs the school the children attend, said they would have to postpone the trip until later in 2011. Rebooking everything could at best be a nightmare, at worse cause the trip to be cancelled. Rebooking has been done, though some of the events/venues could not manage to reschedule. Pete Mortimer is currently in Beirut trying to sort out things at that end. It must have been so tempting to have given up - Pete has his own life and needs to earn a living - but hard to give up when incidents happen like some anonymous person from the North East putting £1000 in cash through Pete's door "for the bairns". You can catch up with the project on Pete's blog and through the Children of Shatila group on Facebook.
http://shatilatheatre.wordpress.com/