Rooftop Micro Farms for Refugee Women in Deheishe

Did you know Karama passed the 50,000 USD donation mark this year in August?? :D In exactly 5 years on the Global Giving platform we’ve been able to gather so much support, so unexpected before! With all these signs of solidarity we’ve been able to create amazing summer camps for our youth, buy library books, build the only grass playfield in the camp, help women (and youth!) on their roofs and rebuild broken gardens when winter storms or invasions have done damage… and much much MUCH more!  In summary you all together have enabled us to continue being an open and welcoming space for kids and youth who are struggling in their daily lives because of their living conditions, the occupation and the poor prospects. Are you ready for the next 5 years? We are!

And who can we better put in the spotlight when we are thinking about the next five year then the young generation of new community leaders? While the rooftop garden project of Karama has originally always focused on women (because of their additional limits in mobility and key role in the healthy upbringing of their families) slowly also several young people have been engaged in the project. They assist in the maintenance of several gardens and were so actively interested that they together developed several proposals to get support from youth funds. One of these proposals led to the partnership with the UN-Habitat Youth Fund. Once their training component started rolling in 2015, we first had one of our international youth volunteers going to Mauritius for the in-person training (Thanks Kevin!:)). Now in 2016 online training continues and also connects youth from Deheishe who have been actively participating online!

Ghassan Abujamia (24 years) who has been active in Karama since he was a youngster is one of them. He has rolled into UN-Habitat’s training program that is offered online, through which he completed three courses and received a certificate. Let’s hear from him.

Everything from the training program for you is online… What exactly do you do in such online courses?

“Yes it is all on an online platform called Eliademy that has a forum per course for discussions, reading materials and video lectures listed for each week. Lectures are all prerecorded so if there is no internet on a certain day, I can just come in the next day and watch the video in the moment that I can. For most courses I have to read some information before the lecture and then make a quiz after I have watched the lecture of that week, completing in this way around 10 weeks of information per course. But all courses also have extra interactive things with it; for example it is required to post each week on the forum to talk about topics with other youth participants from all over the world. Also I had to write essays, business plans and make presentations all in English! My submission and work were reviewed by teachers from real universities that the UN-Habitat works together with and I got real feedback on my assignments, making it feel really interactive. Of course, after completing each of the three courses I got a certificate signed by UN and with my name :)”  

What topics were most interesting to learn about and how you think they will help you?

“I took courses in financial bookkeeping, marketing and e-marketing and social enterprise management. They were all super informative and interesting, though I like the marketing course the best. Over the weeks that I spend reading and interacting about the materials, I got a lot of new ideas how things could work for us in the camp. For example, how we could use something easy like social media and Facebook for the benefit of our project. All the work really helped me to look at the camp from a business perspective; what are some opportunities and what ideas will not be beneficial or sustainable for us economically in the end (so we better not begin with at all). Overall it also helped me to be more confident in my English and communicating about our situation in Deheishe and I really hope the UN project will continue and we can make our written plans reality now!” 

Links:

• The platform used for the UN online courses
• Like us on Facebook!

In this newsflash you will hear about; the several rooftop gardens producing very well again due to the hard work from its owners, new developments in the garden project on hold due to delay in donor funding being released and other women and youth activities going on in the Karama community center.

First of all, GREAT you are engaging with our project and reading our update! The support from all these great people around the world means a lot to us. If you are connected to Karama’s network on social media, you might have seen some pictures passing by on Facebook about the slow but steady progress of the wonderful rooftop gardens. Tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and others are getting ready to be enjoyed. The owners are dedicated and work hard to have a good harvest, hoping to enjoy their produce in the upcoming month of Ramadan, where us Muslims will fast between sunrise and sunset.

New developments in this project however are still on hold due to the delay in donor funding being released. Development work is a hard world and even when good-hearted people believe in our case for green, social entrepreneurship it will not always come through the ways originally expected. But that won’t have our project team stop their work and lots of other activities are ongoing.

Previously we already informed you about a new series of women activities taking place in Karama center, where the women used the updated kitchen to hold workshops for different traditional dishes. This was continued in the last weeks, with recipes including traditional sweets as well! Those were some happy families at home to taste the work of these women’s hands. Some of their production has already been sold through local markets; a great step!  Now a selection of the dishes is being made, that could be produced on a larger scale and sold during the month of Ramadan when people will especially enjoy traditional (but labor intensive) dishes. 

Also Karama just kicked off its first summer camp of 2016! More than 45 youngster between 10 and 12 joined our first activities rigth after the closure of the schools. The teens will participate in days of fun, creativity, expression and collaborative work, both in our center and on trips. The first trip to Solomons Pools was a great success, even though it was a bit more chilly than normally around this time of the year! 

Wish us luck for the rest of the summer! :) 

Thanks to all our supporters, especially our frequent donors, we really appreciate your continous help for our work. 

Links:

• Karama's Facebook - Like us here too!
• Karama's website