Environment: Cleaner Water, Safer Food.
Program: Water
Fighting for better water quality for Palestinian refugees was the reason that 1for3 started. Our first program, in 2012, established a water testing lab in the UN-run Aida refugee camp in partnership with a local community center, Lajee, and Tufts University’s Water: Systems, Science & Society program (WSSS). Water remains at the heart of our work. Since 2012 we have established portable water quality monitoring programs, constructed 45 rooftop gardens and greenhouses (which serve 300 people) built two community cisterns, replaced 30 roof-top water tanks to safeguard household water supplies, and led four delegations to build water testing labs and train technicians to test and monitor water that has led to upgraded infrastructure.
Community Need
The ongoing Israeli occupation interferes with the natural dependency between water, food, health, and education in the everyday lives of those living under it. Reliable sources of clean water impact the cultivation of food, which, in turn, affects the health and well being of individuals. When Palestinians are unable to grow their own food because of limited water and lack of arable land their health suffers. When children do not have a right to play and learn the entire family’s well being is at risk. Often, these innovative and sustainable solutions are generated by the community.
Three parameters guide our work in food. The first is developing growing methods that thrive in low water, densely populated environments. The second is empowering local community members to lead the day-to-day tasks of running food production along with trained staff. The third is to take advantage of the unique local environment.
Expanding our food program means that we are turning a problem into an asset. The “problem” of refugee camps is that they are dense, urban, and lack growing space. We are using these realities as assets for food production, community building, and individual health. Through our experience we know that hydroponics work perfectly in these locations and, when linked to health programs, contribute to healing and community building.
3 years with a hydroponic rooftop garden spanning (4M H x 5M W x 10M L).
6 months with a second community hydroponic garden (1 more being constructed).
9 years of urban growing via rooftop/balcony gardens in 2 UN-refugee camps.
130, mostly women, trained in hydroponic agriculture.
30 youths involved with a weekly study of nutrition, composting, growing.
200 families served through garden produce output.
114 patients H4P benefiting from food training, harvesting, lifestyle coaching.
Over 50 micro-hydroponic growing towers distributed to trained gardeners.
Program: Food
The reality of food insecurity in the lives of Palestinian refugees is profound. Often the poorest and most marginalized members of Palestinian society in the West Bank, food insecurity for refugees has real-world, life-time long consequences. Among these are poverty: nutritious food in the local market is not affordable; illness: poor quality food increases hypertension and diabetes and shortens lifespans; and precarity: most produce comes from Israel meaning that access to it is at the whim of military occupiers. Expanding local food production (i.e food sovereignty) in refugee camps in an environmentally conscious manner can address these and other issues.
In addition to tangible physical benefits our food work supports the psychological health of refugee communities. From our years of experience working in urban growing we know that communally produced food provides mental health wellbeing to individuals and flexibility to society. It does this by expanding resiliency, gender equality, and trauma treatment, among others.
In 2014, 1for3 and the Lajee Center built the first rooftop garden in the UN-run Azza camp. This project was funded by the WSSS team from Tufts University, 1for3, the Pontifical Mission in Jerusalem, and Al-Awda organization. Now, ten years on, the project has supported the construction of 45 rooftop and greenhouse gardens in both Aida and Azza camps that serve 300 people, as well as 3 community hydroponic gardens. These gardens are an integral part of 1for3’s efforts to promote food security and constructively support the Water - Food - Health - Education Nexus at play in the everyday lives of camp residents.
