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February 23, 2006

Dear Cuba Policy Adovcates:

Greetings! We have several topics in this message, so please read to the end!

I. As we did last year, we want to inform you of an opportunity, increasingly rare, to participate in a licensed trip to Cuba, a unique project to build playgrounds for the children of Cuba.

On June 17, 2006, volunteers will board a plane in Miami to spend eight days in Cuba on a full-time program of assembling and erecting three custom-made playgrounds in three family neighborhoods in and around Havana.

This opportunity is being sponsored by It's Just The Kids, Inc., (IJTK), a non-profit organization that completed three similar playgrounds in Havana in May, 2003, and four playgrounds in September, 2005. You may have seen some press reports on the 2005 project, as it received quite a lot of positive media coverage.

IJTK is seeking both funds and volunteers to assist with this 2006 effort. The organization has obtained all the necessary licenses and permissions from both the U.S. Government and Cuban officials and is now in the process of raising the needed funds and recruiting volunteers to make this project a success.

For information about the 2006 Playground Project and It’s Just The Kids, Inc, visit their website at www.itsjustthekids.org/cubasite.htm. If you have any questions about the project, contact Debbie Watterson at debbie@itsjustthekids.org or 619-749-6068. We also encourage you to pass this information on to anyone you know who may be interested traveling to Cuba to volunteer and assist with this project.

May 1 is the deadline for registration, so please contact IJTK as soon as possible if you are interested in being part of this program.

II. Thanks to those of you who have contacted your member of Congress to urge her/him to sign the McGovern/Flake/Lee congressional letter to the Department of the Treasury concerning the right of church denominations to travel to Cuba for activities with their church partners, including the Cuban Council of Churches and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center. There is still time to call your representative if she/he is not on the list of signers pasted in below our signatures. The deadline for signing the letter has been extended to COB March 3. Help us reach 100 congressional signers. The number of the Capitol Switchboard is 202.224.3121; ask to be transferred to your member's office.

For more details on this effort, please see our email alert from January 31. If you have deleted your copy, let us know and we'll send it to you again.

While the Latin America Working Group strongly supports and works for the right of all U.S. citizens to travel freely to Cuba without permission from the U.S. Government, we find this effort by more than 70 members of Congress to be important and worthwhile. Faith-based activists are an important constituency, and mainline national church denominations have for years been involved in exchanges with churches in Cuba in a very positive manner. In fact, religious communities in the United States have been a cornerstone of activism on Cuba, on Central America, and on a range of progressive issues for many years. They deserve our support in their struggle to maintain their licenses to travel to Cuba.

III. An accouncement from the organizers of Ecumenical Advocacy Days:

Challenging Disparity: The Promise of God – the Power of Solidarity
Ecumenical Advocacy Days
Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2006

In 2005 over 850 grassroots advocates, policy experts, politicians, theologians, organizers, and students gathered to shape a new positive, progressive religious vision for U.S. foreign policy. We hope to make 2006 the largest national gathering of U.S. grassroots progressive religious activists focused on a broad spectrum of international and domestic policy issues.

This annual event is sponsored and organized by National Council of Churches denominations, Catholic religious orders, and national human rights groups. Over the weekend beginning Friday night, briefings, trainings and strategy sessions will be offered; and Monday is a lobby day on Capitol Hill. For information on the event and online registration, see http://www.advocacydays.org/ . For details about the Latin America track, see http://www.advocacydays.org/tracks/latinamerica.php