In 1988, in the middle of the first Intifada, a small project took root at St. Andrew's Scottish Church in Jerusalem. Colin Morton, minister of the Church of Scotland congregation of St. Andrew's Jerusalem, and his wife, Carol, established an initiative called CraftAid at St. Andrew's Guesthouse, marketing products on behalf of women's groups and people with special needs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

It was a simple idea with a lasting purpose, and this was the forerunner of Sunbula, founded in 1996.

Three decades later, Sunbula is Palestine's leading fair trade organisation, a network of women-led artisanal groups spanning the West Bank and Gaza that is committed to keeping centuries-old Palestinian craft traditions alive while providing real, dignified livelihoods for the artisans who carry them forward.

How Sunbula Grew: Our milestones

In 1996, CraftAid became a registered nonprofit under a new name: Sunbula. The name, meaning an ear of wheat or grain in Arabic, was chosen as a symbol of hope. Three years later, Sunbula published its first book, Embroidering A Life: Palestinian Women and Embroidery, an early sign of how central documentation and preservation would become to the organization's work.

By 2004, twelve artisan partner groups had joined Sunbula. The following year, Shirabe Yamada came on board as executive director, and Sunbula began offering product development training and capacity-building support to its partners, an investment that would shape the next twenty years. Aseela Women's Cooperative joined that same year, bringing their hand-crafted olive oil soap to Sunbula’s growing network.

The years that followed brought steady growth in the number of artisan groups Sunbula partnered with. In 2007, Sunbula helped establish the Haneen Project in Balata refugee camp. In 2009, Maan Lil-Hayat and Canaan Palestine joined, and research began on what would become Seventeen Embroidery Techniques for Palestine, Sunbula's second book on local embroidery techniques.

2010 was a turning point. Sunbula opened its shop in Sheikh Jarrah, and welcomed the Domari Society for the Gypsies in Jerusalem into the fold. That same year, Sunbula trained women at Beit Doqu Development Society to launch a jewelry-making project, and revived a dormant embroidery unit at the Ameri Women's Program Center. By year's end, nineteen groups were part of the Sunbula family.

 

The growth continued through the decade: Jelld and Nisf Jubeil Ceramics joined in 2016, alongside the revival of a jewelry-making project in the Anata Bedouin community, which ultimately became Noor Al-Qamar. Tahhadi in Khan Al-Ahmar followed in 2017, after Sunbula completed wool-felting training for the local community. In 2018, Beita Women's Development Society joined, bringing the total to twenty-three groups. That same year, Sunbula launched a successful crowdfunding campaign on LaunchGood that helped fund the second embroidery manual that was published the following September.

The power of the crowd soon became fundamental to Sunbula's resilience. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Sunbula turned again to its global community, launching a crowdfunding campaign to bring emergency liquidity to the artisan groups who needed it most. The following year, in 2021, Sunbula joined GlobalGiving, opening new pathways for supporters around the world to stand behind this work.

The years since have brought some of the richest developments yet. Between 2023 and 2024, Sunbula launched a new sewing project for Noor Al-Qamar, published a second edition of the embroidery book, and welcomed Hares Women's Society after completing basket-weaving training with the local community. With that, the number of Sunbula's artisan partner groups reached twenty-four.

 

In 2025, Sunbula took on a new endeavour: restoring antique traditional Palestinian dresses in partnership with the Bethlehem Arab Women's Union and the Women's Child Care Society in Bethlehem. Guided by conservation specialist Tala Sandouka, the restoration project treated these garments not just as craft but as history worth preserving thread by thread, a fitting reflection of the organisation's broader mission.