All Aboard for the Re-launch of Well-being Centre

What is Floatation Therapy?

A new sustainable development, 'Rawabi is designed to serve a generation of Palestinians coming of age and seeking welcoming surroundings to build families, careers and lives'.

Just five miles north of Ramallah in the West Bank, and Rawabi, a new state-of-the-art eco-city for Palestinian families, is rising. When complete, in about three years' time, it will provide opportunities for affordable home ownership, jobs, education and leisure, as well as being an attractive, sustainable environment in which to live, work and grow.

The project, dubbed the most adventurous in modern Palestinian history, is the realisation of a dream steered into reality by entrepreneur, Bashar Masri. Born and raised in the West Bank, the 49 year-old father of two gained international recognition building thousands of affordable homes in Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. Named a 'Global Leader of Tomorrow' by the World Economic Forum, Bashar's primary aim was to one day invest in his homeland and lead the country forward through economic development.

Click this link to download the August-September 2010 edition of Connections. (.pdf format, 2.2mb).

What started out eighteen years ago as an impromptu African drum convention in Bristol has become a vibrant multicultural exchange of acoustic music, dance, song and ceremony.

From Tuesday 10th until Sunday 15th August, Tribe of Doris, a summer school and festival in Black Down Hills, Devon, will offer 40 workshops a day in drumming, dance, and voice, featuring inspirational teachers from across the globe. Doris is primarily a participatory event, where learning from the artists is the core activity, interspersed with open mic performances, spontaneous jamming, elaborate ceremonies, fireside jamborees, a health and relaxation zone and a host of creative youth activities.

On the workshop front, African highlights include djembe drumming with the legendary Seckou Keita, sabar dance and drum, and traditional and contemporary African dance. The Latin area offers Flamenco dance, samba and Brazilian song. In the Arabic area, you can learn Sufi whirling, belly dance and Middle Eastern music. Other highlights include Taiko drumming, West Papuan song, Jewish niggun, Tibetan song, yoga and tai chi.

Educational centres to open nationally, promoting vegan techniques for organic food growing

The Vegan-Organic Network is setting up educational centres across the UK to demonstrate to growers, farmers and the general public the benefits and methods of ‘stockfree’ organic cultivation.

‘Clean, green and cruelty-free’ are the bywords of growers around the world who are using this approach, also known as vegan organics. It excludes artificial chemicals, genetically modified material, animal products and livestock manures. Instead, soil fertility is maintained with the use of plant-based green manures, mulching, composting and crop rotation.

Many stockfree growers are members of the Vegan-Organic Network. Founded in 1996 as a voluntary group, it has been registered as an educational charity for a decade. Its work is based on sound ecological principles, compassion and social justice.