FoEME is proud to report that our Jordanian Director, Mr. Munqeth Mehyar was one of 150 selected delegates from 50 countries around the world to participate in President Obama’s Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC this week.
The Summit highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship to fostering economic opportunity and community development and aimed to identify how to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations, and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim-majority countries. President Obama declared that “real change comes from the bottom up, and that is why we are here”, a vision very much shared by FoEME.
Life and Environment, the umbrella organization of environmental organizations in Israel, awards the “Green Globes” – the “Environment Oscar” – to activists, groups and companies for environmental action in Israel.
FoEME is delighted to announce that our Good Water Neighbors Project was awarded the Green Globe Award for the best Environmental Education project this year.
Read more on our Good Water Neighbors Press coverage page, and click on this video about the GWN project that was shown at the Awards Ceremony.
Going to Jordan? You can now see road signs for Friends of the Earth Middle East’s Sharhabil bin Hassneh EcoPark posted at several important intersections on the Jordan Valley Highway!
This is a significant show of support from important authorities in Jordan and is a source of pride for the hard work undertaken by FoEME’s Amman staff – and Eng. Abdel Rahman Sultan, Deputy Director of the Amman office, in particular.
On April 10th, FoEME gathered together adult residents from two sets of Israeli and Palestinian “Good Water Neighbors” partnering communities for a day of discussions on peacebuilding activities.
Residents of Tulkarem, (Palestine) and Emek Hefer (Israel) came to hear from residents of Wadi Fuqin (Palestine) and Tsur Hadassah (Israel) about their successful partnership and campaign, in particular against the construction of the Separation Barrier that was slated to be built between their communities – that has so far been halted due to their joint efforts.
Read more about the unique partnership between residents of Wadi Fuqin and Tsur Hadassah in this recent JTA article.
On April 21st -23rd, an additional cross border adult meeting was held, this time for sets of Israeli & Jordanian “Good Water Neighbors” partnering communities in the Jordan Valley area.
The group visited the Jordan Valley Regional Council Neighbors Path, and met with local farmers, tourism operators and teachers from participating GWN project schools to share their experiences. They also visited Beit She’an’s Neighbors Path, and then enjoyed a social evening with additional residents from the communities that came to meet neighbors from across the border.
FoEME was especially honored this month to present our Good Water Neighbors project and conduct a site visit in Baka el Gharbia for U.S. Under Secretary of State, Ms. Maria Otero.
Ms. Otero and delegation learned about the GWN project’s efforts to bring together Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians by focusing on shared environmental challenges, and that cooperation can be fostered when both sides realize that working together to protect our shared water resources benefits us all.
The Good Water Neighbors project is supported by USAID, SIDA and the Belgium Foreign Ministry’s Peace Building Desk.
Together with the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, FoEME held a public conference this month on Israeli preparedness for the climate crisis, to which more than 100 people attended.
The conference included an opening lecture on Adaptation to Climate Change, followed by two panel sessions; “Policy and Technology for Water Conservation in the Urban Sector”, and “Adaptation to Climate Crisis and Water Conservation – Local and Regional”, given by a wide variety of local and international experts.
Read the proceedings here (in Hebrew).
FoEME’s Climate Change project is supported by the Heinrich Boell Stiftug.
Having won the prestigous Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurshop last year, FoEME Directors returned to the Skoll Forum held in Oxford UK this month to share our peacemaking and water management experience as panelists in critical issue sessions at the Forum.
Participation in the Skoll Forum again proved to be an important opportunity for networking, ideas exchange and empowerment.