MiniActive

Did you know you could make a minion this from a stack of tires?

Well never get “tired” of this minion

That would be our new group of Palestinian teenage girls, who are volunteering to improve for their neighborhoods and environments. Recently they held a number of activity days, recycling and re-purposing old materials into new. Here are some pictures of the process:

Chipping in to make surroundings nicer

They not only don’t want to live in filth, they also want to live in a beautiful environment. They decorated old plastic bottles,

Youth working

DVD’s, and more:

Painting discs

They made planters out of old plastic bottles:

Making painted bottle planters

They painted telephone cabinets

Painting telephone cabinets as well

And even old rusty dumpsters. Here’s a picture of the dumpster before

Before – rusted old dumpster

And now you can see it after:

The dumpster after – what a joyous site!

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continuing support of this program. Here’s the link to one of the Facebook posts in Arabic:

It should be simple, going to take the bus. You go to the bus stop, have a seat, and wait for the bus to arrive. Right?

Not necessarily, if you live in East Jerusalem. For many, this is a regular sight at the bus stop.

Common state of bus stops

For almost two years the MiniActive women have been registering complaints about these benches with the municipality, which is responsible for them. Together with MiniActive, we finally turned to the person in charge of bus stops at the Municipality. She suggested that the contractor in charge of performing the work tour the problematic bus stops, together with the MiniActive women. The tour took place on Sunday, March 13, and by Friday, March 18, all of the bus stops had been fixed!

Fixing a bench in Shuafat

Parts have already been ordered to begin fixing benches in Beit Hanina. We expect there to be tours to additional East Jerusalem neighborhoods soon.

Finally, a bench to sit on

Congratulations to MiniActive on their perseverance that is finally paying off. Let’s hope the Municipality keeps up the pace.

Fixing things right with heavy machinery

Here’s the cross-post from 0202-A View from East Jerusalem, which translated the original post from the MiniActive Facebook page:

We’ve been following here and here the development of MiniActive’s horticulture therapy course taking place in Beit Hanina.

The beautiful garden

Participants are learning themselves, as well as practicing with the kids.

The beautiful garden

It’s quite amazing seeing how the garden is shaping up.

The beautiful garden

It’s such a pleasure to present these beautiful pictures!

Flowers, flowers everywhere

More of the building in progress:

Beginning the landscaping

These accomplishments were cross-posted on the English 0202 – A View from East Jerusalem‘s Facebook page:

And here’s the post from MiniActive’s Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their ongoing support of this project.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…

We’re proud to announce that, after more than 3 years of generating amazing grassroots change in East Jerusalem (read here for more about our accomplishments), activists from Lod asked us to bring MiniActive to the central city of Lod.

First meeting of MiniActive Lod

Their first meeting was held this week, in which our coordinator Intisar, explained the background and methodology of the program. She’ll be on hand to mentor them as they get started.

Initial introductions

Congratulations MiniActive Lod, and good luck!

The presentation

Here’s the Facebook post in Arabic:

And also translated into English:

We reported here about MiniActive’s success in obtaining an additional 3 million NIS per year to the city’s sanitation budget, which was achieved through the hard work of not only MiniActive, but also the team from 0202-A View from East Jerusalem, municipal officials, city council members, and more.

Now, this achievement is getting public attention in the country’s major news outlets. Read the Hebrew article that was published on Tuesday on the Walla! web site, one of Israel’s major news sources. Click on the picture for a PDF file of the Hebrew article:

Headline: “‘Living in a Garbage Dump’: East Jerusalem Residents Tired of Garbage in Streets

We hope that this coverage will add to other opportunities to make the city aware of this troubling situation in East Jerusalem and to the Miniactive activist women campaign to improve their daily life.

Yet again, the MiniActive women in East Jerusalem have proven how effective their activism can be. After more than four months of their public campaign, “We won’t live in filth!” they’ve succeeded in obtaining an additional 3 million shekels toward sanitation in East Jerusalem to the Municipality’s budget! These funds will be added in 2016, and continue annually.

“We Don’t Want to Live in Filth!” Campaign

We’ve written about the campaign that MiniActive has been heading since the fall of 2015 here and here.  In addition, the “0202” Facebook pages have translated these posts into both the veteran  Hebrew  page as well as the new English  page:

These popular pages (over 15,000 likes in Hebrew over the past year, over 1,200 likes in English over the past two months) are followed closely by both municipality officials as well as journalists, and everyone who is anybody who cares about what happens in Jerusalem. In addition, we started tagging City Council members in the 0202 posts as well. “Hitorerut” party Council Members were those who made the efforts to impact 2016 budget in this regard.

The result – an additional 3 million shekels was allocated in the 2016 for sanitation in East Jerusalem, as well as 16 million shekels for purchases of equipment and vehicles that can be used in East Jerusalem! Both the Director General of the Municipality and the Director Operations Dept. supported this measure.

Garbage garbage, every day

Our work hasn’t ended with the approval of the additional budget – we will be there to ensure that the equipment that is purchased will meet the needs of East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. For example – the garbage trucks that are purchased will be able to navigate East Jerusalem’s narrow streets and alleyways.

An equally important takeaway from this process – municipal officials are now talking about garbage in East Jerusalem as a central problem that can’t be swept away using an old decrepit street-sweeping machine.

We’re very excited about this news, but it’s not our success – it’s that of the MiniActive network, and that of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.  Kol Hakavod! Kul ElIhtiram (كل الاحترام)! May we soon see the difference in the streets and garbage cans.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continuing support of this program.

We’re enjoying unseasonably warm weather here in Jerusalem, and we thought we’d share some beautiful pictures from our MiniActive Horticulture Therapy Course. This first-ever course in Arabic began in December and is running through May, in cooperation with the David Yellin Academic College of Education.

Working in the garden

The course is taking place at one of the largest schools for special education in East Jerusalem, in Beit Hanina. Alongside the theoretical study, the women have begun working with the children. Such fun to be working outside!

With individual attention

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their ongoing support of this program.

Learning about nature

We’ve reported here in the past about the plethora of projects that the MiniActive women have been able to get done in their neighborhoods over the past several years. This has been an exponential increase over even the smallest improvements that had taken place previously.

Unfortunately, the past few months have been challenging – as the security situation became more tenuous, services from the municipality noticeably slowed. MiniActive women, however, did not give up. They continued to call, and began to write letters, and did not stop posting on their Facebook page. In addition, some of the posts from the MiniActive Facebook page were also translated into Hebrew on the 0202 Facebook Page and in English on the 0202 – A View from East Jerusalem Facebook page, which are followed by top municipal officials, journalists and human rights organizations. Regardless of the political situation, the municipality is required to provide basic services to its residents.

It seems as if this persistence is paying off. This past week MiniActive posted two instances of the municipality fixing local roads – something we haven’t seen for a long time. Here is one instance in Beit Hanina:

Road work in Beit Hanina

And another from A-Tur:

Road work in A-Tur

Unrelenting Creativity  – that has been the modus operandi of the MiniActive network since its establishment in 2012. And today, three years on, MiniActive women are continuing to find original ways to deal with a challenging situation. Garbage collection in East Jerusalem, always a sore spot, has become even more problematic over the past few months. The women still call the 106 municipal hotline, but many garbage piles remain.

Refusing to give up, the women changed their tactic. Since October, MiniActive women have engaged in a “We Don’t Want to Live in Garbage” campaign on their Facebook page. Each day several pictures of overflowing garbage ticks and makeshift garbage dumps are uploaded to the MiniActive Facebook page.

Original Garbage Receptacle

These are often shared by the 0202-A View from East Jerusalem Facebook page, that translates Arabic-language Facebook and Internet posts into Hebrew, which reaches a number of prominent journalists and local politicians. While collection has improved somewhat, we will continue putting pressure on service providers to provide fundamental services to East Jerusalem residents.

MiniActive Anti-trash Campaign, from January 19

May future news bring pictures of Jerusalem’s beauty – and not of its filth.

We’ve been excited about the opening of the first Horticulture Therapy Course to take place in the Arabic language, in cooperation with the David Yellin Academic College of Education, for awhile. We’ve had to make some changes adjust to the ‘situation’ – the course was originally supposed to take place at the College in the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hakerem. But because it was difficult for many participants to leave their neighborhoods in general, and to leave their neighborhoods for west Jerusalem neighborhoods was even more difficult, we moved the course to a school for special education in Beit Hanina – the largest school for special education in East Jerusalem.

Learning Practical Session of Horticulture Therapy

At the end of the course in May 2016, participants will practice what they learned by starting a therapeutic garden with the children. The course has been meeting for just over a month  – and it was definitely worth the wait! Thus far they’ve gone from the beginning stages (above) to planting (below) –

Planting

To composting as well.

Composting in the course

We can hardly wait to see the fruits of their labors – as well as their work with the children afterward. Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of MiniActive.