On December 3, 2019, our Intisar, Director of MiniActive, led a round table about MiniActive at the annual Gishurim Conference. This conference is organized each year for those involved with community mediation centers throughout Israel. We’ve been among the organizers of this conference since its beginning.
MiniActive as an example of communication between residents and the municipality in Jerusalem
The conference included a number of lectures, as well as round-table sessions with a number of initiatives. Intisar spoke about the history and rationale of MiniActive, and how it has gained the successes it has.
She also emphasized 5 main principles that guide MiniActive:
- The basis of work needs to start from the bottom-up, from the grassroots toward the local authority.
- Small success in a short time period (no more than 3 weeks) are important to the process of building confidence and trust.
- It is important to choose one precise issue to take care of, preferably in the local area, in order to be able to follow-up and to demonstrate success.
- PR as a way to pressure the local authority into action and to raise public awareness about the problem. Traditional and social media as effective ways to document the problem and provide visual messaging to officials who can help solve the problem.
- It is important to publish “before” and “after” photos to the public (via social media) to demonstrate success and to build confidence in the initiative.
Here’s a post (in Hebrew) about the conference, which gathered 500 from all around Israel who are involved in community mediation centers.
Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Natan for their support of MiniActive!
