The Little Prince – Cleaning Jerusalem Together

We recently took stock of everything that happened in 2019 as a result of the Little Prince’s activities, and see what been happening! Here’s a partial list.

Moshe Lion as a mayoral candidate, after signing the Clean City platform

In 2019:

• The Jerusalem Municipality cleared over 1/2 million tons of garbage!!
• More cleaning workers were added – 500 subcontract workers will be added to the street-sweeping system by the end of next year.
• More street-sweeping vehicles and cranes – the Jerusalem Municipality bought new vehicles for every area of ​​the city.
• The Enforcement Division began giving reports for throwing trash in the street, for leaving garbage bags outside the bins, construction waste, garbage from businesses, those who don’t clean up after their dogs, and more. (Until 2019, the Enforcement Division had not given any reports for garbage issues!)
• About 20 neighborhood groups of residents working for cleaning the neighborhood were established.
• Some neighborhoods were assigned special days to clear landscaping waste and large furniture. By the end of next year, all neighborhoods will have been assigned a fixed day.
• Garbage began being collected on Saturday nights all over the city!
• Containers and trash cans have been upgraded in many neighborhoods.
• The first part of a Clean City Campaign began (in cooperation with residents).
• The first garbage parade was held in cooperation with residents and the Municipality.
• During the summer months, there were over 140 educational activities in the gardens and parks.
• Educational programs on keeping streets clean began to be implemented in schools and kindergartens in all educational systems (religious, secular, ultra-Orthodox and Arab).
• Trash cans were decorated with colorful paintings.
• Private open spaces: In the 2020 work plan, some of the private open spaces will be cleaned by the Municipality (depending on their size and type). All residents will receive notifications before areas close to them are cleaned.
• Residents and professionals forums were set up with senior operations manager and several active work groups.

There’s going to be so much more in the upcoming year …. You could say that the city is still dirty, that there hasn’t been any change. But you can also say, look how far we’ve come and how much we’ve achieved.
Happy New Year to everyone
* Pictured: Moshe Leon holds the Little Prince’s cleaning platform – October 2018.

Here’s the post that was published in the Little Prince Facebook group:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince.

In the “Little Prince” program, when we began two years ago with a host of residents’ initiatives, our goal was to make Jerusalem clean. But an equally important goal was to establish a genuine, mutual and active partnership with the Jerusalem Municipality and its various departments. And today, it’s actually happening!

After much work by members of the Little Prince, and slowly weaving ongoing and long-lasting relationships with municipal officials and professionals, we, along with city representatives, built a number of forums in which residents and municipal officials meet to discuss issues, advance common agendas, and solve problems, as well as collaborate in thinking, planning and carrying out additional plans. We’re talking about partnerships with senior-level officials, with residents from many neighborhoods …. a truly exciting moment.

Forums of residents and professionals, building long-term partnerships

During the summer vacation, a broad forum of ultra-Orthodox residents, representatives from all neighborhoods throughout the city, met with the senior level officials from the Operations Administration that included the regional manager, the coordinator of the citywide objective, division managers and their staff, district managers, the manager of the 106 hotline, director of public participation from the municipality, senior managers from the Community Administration, and more.

After the summer vacation, a similar forum was held by residents of the ‘general’ Jewish sector (religious and secular Jews) with senior representatives from every division: Operations Administration, the Culture Society, and Sport Administration, the Community Administration, and the for Service Quality Authority.

Numerous forums, targeting different problems

For those who say that there is nothing to be excited about from two meetings, we can say that in light of these two meetings, there have already been two work meetings in each of the forums, one with the Sanitation Division and one with the Policing and Enforcement Division. All the meetings had a nice atmosphere, were held in a professional manner, and discussions stayed on point. Both ‘sides’ asked questions and received information, raised ideas to advance solutions, thoughts and discussions were shared, needs were raised and initiatives were proposed. Admittedly, this is not a common perception of meetings between residents and municipal officials.

We are currently setting up a Forum for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, which must be built with the utmost sensitivity to regarding both residents and municipal officials.

Building a partnership of this kind is a fascinating process that requires both sides to change their perceptions of the other, which have taken root and now it is time to change: Replacing perception of waste, inefficiency, annoyances and complaining to one of trust, giving each other credit, mutuality respect and responsibility, and professionalism.

The residents of Jerusalem and the municipal officials are gaining experience in a long-term partnership process on “difficult” issues of sanitation, supervision and gardening, which has never taken place before in the city.

Thanks to the Director of the Operations Administration, who opened the door, and to Mayor Lion who is fully supportive.

Here’s a post (in Hebrew) that originally appeared in the Little Prince – Cleaning Up Jerusalem Together Facebook group in July about the forum for Haredi residents. Today the processes in the Haredi, ‘general’ Jewish and Palestinian sectors are continuing to develop and gain momentum…

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince!!!

It started as the dream of one – and now many – activists, and now it’s a top Jerusalem priority.

As Mayor Moshe Lion rounds up his first year in office and plans his second, we see that making Jerusalem clean covers 3 of his top 5 priorities. More importantly, it also means that a significant amount of municipal resources – hundreds of millions of shekels, will be invested toward this goal. According to this article, published in Jerusalem’s Kol Ha’ir local newspaper, top priorities include:

1. Increasing garbage collection on Saturday nights, both to be in-line with heightened usage on Saturdays, and to have 100 fewer garbage trucks on the roads on Sunday mornings, causing traffic congestion.
2. Addition of 600 more sanitation workers
3. Addition of 1,000 underground garbage receptacles, which are cleaner, take up less space, and hold more than the traditional above-ground kind.

Kol Ha’Ir article on the mayor’s 2019 – 2020 work plan

Kol Hakavod – congratulations to all the neighborhood activists throughout Jerusalem who helped this come about! Kol Hakavod to Municipal officials, professionals and city council members, who are our full partners in helping make Jerusalem a clean city.

Many thanks to the Rayne Foundation and the Jerusalem Foundation for their support for this program.

One of the key issues Little Prince deals with is problematic urban areas, which are used by all residents of the city and are not cleaned, ever.

The reason: Its zoning is such that it’s unclear who’s responsible for the area, the municipality or residents, so nobody cleans. True, the ultimate responsibility for cleaning the entire city is that of the municipality – and it is this perspective that members of the Little Prince are working to advance – but it has still yet to be adopted by all municipal departments.

Little by little, members of the Little Prince choose a different area and tour with municipal professionals and officials and meet with them. They connect between professionals in the different departments: sanitation, horticulture and ticketing and enforcement, regional manager for urban planning and more, to make the municipality take responsibility for cleaning the particular area and not only once, but as part of its regular routine.

Nayot grove, finally clean

One of the many examples of the complexity of this process is a grove in the Nayot neighborhood. Residents have been trying for years to get the municipality to clean up the neglected area, but the municipality did not take responsibility. The area is large, and residents from all parts of the city use it often, so it’s not logical that local residents be held responsible for the entire area.

As a result of the methods developed by the Little Prince and the networking and connections developed by its members with municipal officials from the gardening, sanitation, and local enforcement departments, and the Municipality is now cleaning the area on an ongoing basis, each week.

Not only along the street, but among the trees as well

Here is an example of a message written by one of the residencies after the first cleaning of the municipality in late September 2019:

Sometimes dreams come true … Today they cleaned the grove on Yehoshua Yavin St. Zoned as a ‘brown’ area that the Municipality leased from the Israel Lands Authority that leased it from the Greek Patriarch. For years no department agreed to clean it. Today the sanitation department has made a historic and hysterical move. Wishing us a happy and clean year in the capital city!

Whatsapp message, with author’s permission

And the next day …..

Guess what? They cleaned an additional grove on Yehoshua Yavin St. Now we can wish a happy and clean year for everyone. Well done to the caring residents and the sanitation workers who are showing more and more partnership and dedication. Thank you, and may this only continue and only the best!.

Let’s hope that it’ll be like this all the time!

This was reported in the Little Prince’s Hebrew-language Facebook group:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince!

We’ve come a long way in Cleaning Up Jerusalem Together. This year, just before the Passover Seder, our Tal Kligman was able to take a moment to see how far we’ve come, in this Facebook post:

Cleaning right before Passover

A few hours before the Passover Seder, 3:00 PM, and finishing up my last two errands. My small daughter fell asleep in the back seat, so I continue to drive, meandering through the neighborhoods. There is silence in the streets, when everyone is at home, preparing for the holiday. But not everyone. The only (almost) people still out on the streets are the sanitation workers. Beit Vegan, Ein Kerem, Kiryat Hayovel, Beit Hakerem and Kiryat Menachem, garbage trucks all over. 3-5 workers on each truck, moving cans, emptying them. The holiday is nearly upon us, and here they are, working, and making such an effort so that we can have clean streets for the holiday.

It’s true, alongside rows of clean garbage cans there were many that were not. There were also residents who piled trash on benches or next to stores that weren’t cleaned up. There were cans that were emptied but the garbage that fell to the ground stayed there. There was a little bit of everything.

But hey, there are municipal employees who are still working and at 3:15 on a holiday eve, and the Jerusalem Municipality is still apparently awake.

More cleaning right before Passover

My holiday blessing: I hope that we continue our joint efforts to clean up our beloved city, that this effort will become routine, that residents from all the communities will help the sanitation teams and put the garbage in the garbage cans, that the infrastructure will grow and meet the needs of the residents, and that we’ll be able to plan and bring the plans to fruition, the Municipality and residents, the way to a clean Jerusalem. Because the city belongs to all of us and we all want a clean Jerusalem…Thank you sanitation workers for your efforts and willingness, and for not skipping over my small, inaccessible alley.

Happy and clean holiday for everyone.

Here’s the post in Hebrew:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince.

Part of learning about how to make Jerusalem a clean city is also learning about what works. One of the goals set out in the Little Prince’s one-year anniversary celebration last July was to learn from other successes. And Rishon Lezion is ranked the cleanest city in Israel according to national indicators.

Jerusalem residents and city officials learning from Rishon Lezion

So we went to Rishon Lezion to learn what they do well.

We went with a group of Municipality officials – both elected and professional – including David Zohar, a city council representative from the Haredi Degel Hatorah party.

We discussed the actions that the Rishon Lezion municipality takes in order to keep its streets clean – the amount of resources it dedicates to the field, the number of sanitation works, the number of overseers, the level of enforcement, (They give out 4,600 tickets each year, just to people who don’t clean up after their dogs!)  – all of which are significant, and significantly higher per capita than many cities in Israel, including in Jerusalem. There is a great deal of planning and strategic thinking, both within municipal departments and in cross-department cooperation. Residents are also considered full partners in the effort to keep Rishon Lezion clean. As a result of hard work and careful planning and cooperative work, the Director of Rishon Lezion’s Environment Division has been able to instill a sense of pride among sanitation workers, which is rare for that municipal branch. There is even a mechanism for measurement and reward for outstanding workers.

It was fascinating and inspiring. Next step – Jerusalem!

Here’s what the Playback Theater had to say (at the Trash Party we had recently) about the comparison between Jerusalem and Rishon Lezion (Hebrew):

Many thanks to the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince. And to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of activism throughout Jerusalem.