MiniActive

In addition to improving their immediate surroundings, our MiniActive women are learning to take care of broader environmental issues. Since the beginning of the year they’ve taken part in a number of initiatives, including courses (one in February – March and another, for different women in April – May) on compost, household environmental issues, and more. They distributed some 20 compost bins that they received from the sanitation department of the Jerusalem Municipality. In light of the demand for compost bins, a group of women requested an additional 10-15 bins for distribution.

Another 8 MiniActive volunteers (out of a total of 25 participants) are participating in a special gardening course at the David Yellin Academic College of Education.

On June 8 there was a tour of community gardens in west Jerusalem, which showed examples of what can be done in the community. This included a stop at the community garden at the Nature Museum, and an in-depth explanation of composting.

Compost tour, Nature Museum

In the everyday operation of the MiniActive project in East Jerusalem, the focus is on that which is in the  immediate vicinity – one’s house, one’s street, one’s neighborhood. Occasionally, though, we have an opportunity to facilitate activities that enable our fantastic cadre of women to meet and learn from Palestinian women from other parts of the country. Over the past four months, a group of 25 MiniActive women has been meeting with a women’s leadership group from the city of Kfar Qassem, about an hour’s drive north-east of Jerusalem, just north – west of Rosh Ha’ayin and Petach Tikvah. This group focuses on healthy eating and natural beauty care products and how they relate to the environment. This exchange  was made possible through the Kidron-Wadi-El-Nar Program.

January 29 workshop – Kfar Qassem

Beginning in January, both groups participated in a series of exchanges, alternating between Kfar Qassem and Jerusalem. The first meeting, in Kfar Qassem, introduced both groups to each other. The theme of the meeting was healthy eating, and the teacher was a well-known chef from the northern town of Umm elFahem. The February meeting was held in Jerusalem, where the the guests heard and saw more about what MiniActive does. Both groups also went on a tour in southern Jerusalem to: the outlook point in Abu Tor, which overlooks the entire Abu Tor / Silwan area.

February 26 – Abu Tor

The promenade in Armon Hanatziv, with its breathtaking view of the Old City.

February 26 – Armon Hanatziv

Then the group arrived at the Afak school in Sur Baher, which is a school for special needs children that works with its children in an on-site greenhouse, and saves water by using rainwater collecting system to help to water the plants and flush toilets.

February 26 – Afak school

In March the MiniActive women traveled again to Kfar Qassem, and learned about a school’s garden there, about compost, healthy eating. Part of their project includes producing natural plant-based creams and other products and nutritional supplements.

March 26 – natural creams

Yesterday (May 7) we held the final meeting, also in Kfar Qassem. This included a tour of the area and a summary of the encounter series.

An integral part of the MiniActive program includes training in effective methods and processes in improving physical infrastructure. As noted elsewhere in the blog, these methods include calling the hotlines of municipal and other services, meetings and site tours with service providers, writing letters, network-building with the MiniActive Facebook page, and more.

MiniActive Magnet

Today, MiniActive added something new to its arsenal – catchy new magnets. The magnets feature detailed explanations about how to register a complaint with the various service providers, including the municipal hotline (106) and the Hagihon water company. It also includes the phone number of the MiniActive project in East Jerusalem.

As noted last year, our MiniActive volunteers work to advance social problems as well as physical problems. This includes expanding education about first aid amongst volunteers. Last year’s first aid course included 20 women from all over Jerusalem; this year, there were 20 – 25 women in each of three locations: Kufr Aqeb in the north, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, and Umm Tuba in the south.

First aid course 2014

This first course was a basic, 20-hour course, which began in March and is running until the beginning of May. There is significant interest in a more in-depth course (88 hours of instruction), which will enable graduates to also earn money as qualified chaperones for school trips.

CPR demonstration

If you follow MiniActive’s Facebook page, and here on our blog, you’ll see that they’ve been extremely busy. But we’ll give you a few summaries here of what they’ve been up to over the past few months.

Numbers

In January 158 complaints were taken care of. In February there were 412 complaints registered and 250 taken care of. In March 2014 alone, were a total of 670 complaints registered to the municipal 106 hotline. Of these, 250 were taken care of.

Before and after road repaving, Wadi Joz

Seeing is Fixing

In March and April Palestinian MiniActive volunteers from the southern neighborhoods of Sur Baher and Umm Tuba, respectively, hosted  the Municipality’s regional director of planning and infrastructure. Some 40 residents from both neighborhoods spoke about different problems they face, on their respective street, and how they can work to solve them. Issues ranged from re-paving parts of a street, to installing a mirror to increase visibility on narrow, windy roads, to receiving approval to paint (paint themselves) public walls. In Umm Tuba, the tour took place on a road that is to become a ‘model road’, where improvements are going to be made in a number of areas. The women (plus one representative of the men) spoke freely with the regional director, asking how he can help, and he, in return, asking what they can give in return. (For example, they agreed to plant plants, supplied by the Municipality, in public areas.)

There have been and continue to be so many obstacles to improving infrastructure in the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. We continue to be so proud of the MiniActive project in East Jerusalem that has been able to make so many inroads toward improving everyday life. We’d like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation for their continuing support of this program.

Closing off electrical wires

Excitement was in the air on November 21 at the Shared Living in a Mixed City conference, which was organized by the Jerusalem Foundation, the Adam Institute for Democracy and Peace, and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. At the conferencem, we provided an overview of the amazing achievements and methodology of the Miniactive program in the session entitled, “Providing Service” – Municipal Services in Mixed Cities.” The session shed light on the tensions between ultra-Orthodox and non-ultra-Orthodox Jews in Beit Shemesh, the struggle for equal housing and education rights for Arabs in Jaffa, and on MiniActive project in East Jerusalem.

We started by describing what the project had done. Picture after picture of ‘before’ and ‘after’, a garbage receptacle, a traffic light, a safety barrier, a bus stop, water drainage. Everyday change taking place in almost every neighborhood. She then described the project’s methods of bombarding the 106 municipal hotline with requests and pictures, letters, etc.; of providing tours of different streets for municipal unit heads to see with their own eyes. Of organizing meetings between 106 workers and MiniActive volunteers, so they can learn the work process of the 106 hotline to make their work more effective.

From behind the words and pictures came the message – this is our house, and it’s time that we fight for it to be a pleasant place to live. And the Municipality and other service providers – it is their obligation to give us the services.

The description inspired everyone in the room. “Miniactive has brought about a huge change,” began Dr. Hagit Perez of the Department of Epidemiology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Chair of the session, and an activist in the south in her own right. “In these cases usually two groups are blamed: one, the victims usually blames themselves. How did they let themselves get into this situation? And the second to be blamed is the service provider, who doesn’t provide sufficient services. Here, Palestinian women have said, ‘Let’s solve our own problems. We can do anything, we have no limits. We, as mothers, want to make sure our children have a better future. We want to make the change not only I our own back yards, but make a change in in our whole community’s awareness.”

One audience member commented, “It’s truly inspiring how Palestinian women presented the program to us, what they’ve done and their accomplishments. She is such a change maker.”

A question from the audience was, “If this methodology was so successful, what about MiniActive in other groups, such as the Haredi public?” Well, we’re working on that, too…

Late this summer, Istanbul’s ‘Rainbow Stairs‘ made international headlines and, almost unintentionally, became a symbol of grassroots resistance, human rights and democracy. The Istanbul municipality painted over the stairs in a drab gray, numerous rainbow-painted staircases popped up all over Turkey in protest.

Inspired by the mass spontaneous outbursts of color that suddenly filled Turkish streets, our own MiniActive decided to take action in East Jerusalem. One of the main goals of MiniActive is to empower women and their families to take responsibility for their lives, especially their physical surroundings.They’ve worked a long time in improving things that needed to be fixed – roads, garbage receptacles, sidewalks, etc. More about that below.

But just as important as fixing the almost insurmountable amount of things that need to be fixed, is also a need to make your physical surroundings pleasant and special. MiniActive has come to teach its participants that, just like they are responsible for making the space inside their homes presentable, collectively they – all 1,000 of them and their families – are also responsible for making the space outside their homes not just presentable, but pretty, too.

The MiniActive participants recruited their families to paint public stairways in four neighborhoods -Silwan, Wadi Joz, Abu Tor, and the Old City. A local merchant donated half the budget for paint. Fortunately, the Jerusalem Municipality is not as zealous about gray stairs as that of Istanbul. Enjoy some pictures of our local Rainbow Stairs.

Left: stairs in the Old City; top: stairs in Silwan; bottom: stairs in Abu Tor

In taking responsibility to care for the collective public space, MiniActive has also made local streets accessible. The Jerusalem Municipality is in the process of planning physical improvements to neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. However, not all of East Jerusalem’s streets are included. The MiniActive women, together with the Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights organization, petitioned the Jerusalem Municipality to make major improvements to 3 roads that were not in the Municipality’s original plan. This will make it much easier for local residents, especially those with physical limitations, to navigate the streets.

Working in Wadi Joz to increase accessibility

A third accomplishment related to garbage. Garbage, or an overabundance of it, is a big problem in East Jerusalem. In a concerted effort to improve the situation, our MiniActive participants took to the phones. They inundated the municipal hotline with requests, and succeeded in obtaining 15 new garbage receptacles – 12 smaller ones as seen in the right-hand corner below, and 3 larger ones. They also coordinated the exact placement of the bins with the neighboring residents, so that everyone would be satisfied. Of course, this was only the tip of the iceberg. They are now waiting for 15 more receptacles.

In previous posts we spoke about the work of the East Jerusalem Palestinian MiniActive volunteers helping to deal with unwanted waterfalls and streams, that developed as a result of the major winter storm in January 2013.

Winter damage in A-Tur

Now, we’re here to show pictures of streams and waterfalls that are supposed to be there…

Banias stream

And its famous waterfall

Earlier this week, a select group of MiniActive volunteers traveled north to the Golan Heights to enjoy the Hermon Stream Nature Reserve (known as the Banias). They left Jerusalem at the crack of dawn, drove all the way up to the Banias, had the full tour, ate lunch, and came back home.

Resting beside the stream

This trip is another thank-you to the hard work these women put in every week in improving everyday life in East Jerusalem, one phone call at a time. For example, recent issues include:

Getting a bench installed at a bus stop outside the Old City:

Bus stop bench

And reporting health hazards, including areas prone to rat infestation:

In Silwan