Gardens, Goats, and More: Climate Action Palestine

For "Gardens, Goats, and More," Rebuilding Alliance wanted to increase our chance of success as much as possible. In our research, we spoke to different groups that had experience in small-scale agriculture and income-generation projects so we could learn from their experiences. 

One of these organizations was Palestine's Agriculture Development Association (self-styled as PARC) which does work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They are very experienced in developmental farming projects ranging from greenhouses to providing farm animals and birds. After a preliminary videoconference (at 6 AM in California and 4 PM in Gaza), they generously offered to take our Palestinian NGO partners on a field trip to show one of their succesful projects. Our high school interns, Lama and Mazen, also tagged along. Lama's dream is to be a cowgirl in Gaza. She wants to have a cow and distribute the milk to needy families. Although this proposal is not part of "Gardens, Goats, and More," Rebuilding Alliance still thought that Lama and Mazen could learn a lot from the trip.  

On July 5th, a representative from PARC took them to a thriving garden run by a grandmother. She has been able to support her family just from the income generated by this garden and farm animals given to her by PARC. She even has a barter arrangement with the local market to trade food she has grown for food that vendors sell in the market.

Our partners sounded so excited when they reported back on their day with PARC, and we all learned so much. What was key to the PARC program's success came down to two factors. One, they were very selective about their candidates. They conducted extensive interviews with them and visited in-person to confirm their capacity for animals and gardening. Two, there was a lot of support before and during the process. Candidates were required to attend workshops before starting. Veterinarians conducted regular check-ups on the animals and taught them how to deal with emergencies. All this support was available all the way to the last day of the project. As a result, all of PARC's beneficiaries from this program—not just the owner shown below—still have thriving gardens and/or animals today. This is all the more remarkable because PARC ended this program two years ago when their funding ran out.

All in all, the field trip was very educational. Rebuilding Alliance is now in the process of working with our partners to identify beneficiaries. Our NGO partners are now choosing families for their pilot projects. More news to come.