חג פסח כשר ושמח!

Happy Passover!

Regional Climate Conference

In collaboration with the Regional Partnership for the Advancement of an Urban Biosphere in the Jerusalem Hills, and the Sustainable Jerusalem Lobby, we are organizing a Regional Climate Conference which will take place on the following dates and address the following locally relevant topics:

• Tuesday 18/5 natural systems & open spaces

• Wednesday 26/5 agriculture and food (this topic with have a simultaneous English discussion group)

• Thursday 3/6 energy

After the Passover break, the conference will be open for registration.

USA Update

While Yuval has recently returned from New York to Israel, work is in progress to create a group of lead stakeholders that will continue to develop partnerships with US organizations and individuals to become Jerusalem Stakeholders. Currently the group consists of Rachel Amar, Zarah Levin-Fragasso and Ami Greener, and it is expected to grow to 6-8 members, expanding the support base for JGF initiatives.

The group of lead stakeholders will work with the JGF to identify potential partner organizations and communities, recruit new stakeholders, exchange knowledge, practices and policies with partners, develop plans for Green Pilgrimage tours and write about their involvement in local media. We see the evolving relationship with the group, and through it with organizations and communities in the US, as a way to explore an innovative and globally aware channel of communication in the relationship between communities in the US (not only Jewish) and Jerusalem/Israel. We are aiming to work together to cope with the many challenges to sustainability facing communities, cities and indeed the whole world.

Romema

Esther Tzion will be filling in for Batel during her maternity leave as the coordinator of the Green Visitors’ Center in Romema. She, together with our intern Dor, have set two main goals for the summer months in the garden: 1) rehabilitation of ¼ of the garden that was damaged due to adjacent construction and 2) preparing the space for the Shmita (sabbatical) year, which begins on Rosh Hashana. With these two large tasks, they and local volunteer residents will be very busy! Good luck!

Jacqueline Rose will be taking over Batel’s administrative duties during her maternity leave. She made aliya from England in 1998 and started working in the environmental field immediately. She worked at the SPNI-Jerusalem branch where she met Naomi Tsur who was her first boss. For the next 20 years she worked in private consultancy, NGOs and the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

She joined the JGF staff in 2015 working closely with Naomi in the early stages of the organisation. She also created and continues to maintain the JGF website.

In 2018 Jacqueline left the organisation to pursue her new passion of being a Yoga and Women's Health Teacher and supporting women at different stages of their life-cycle. 

Today Jacqueline combines working as  Menopause Coach, Yoga Teacher for Women's Health and passionate Women's Health Advocate together with working with small businesses and managing their social media marketing. 

Jacqueline lives in Modiin together with her husband and 5 children. 

Kiriyat Menachem

Finally, as promised, we provided benches for the community garden of “Pninat Hanurit”. The benches were constructed by youth from the neighborhood, who received not only some income, but also skill and a sense of pride from their useful contribution to the neighborhood.  This is community coming together, this is sustainability!

Purim event in the community garden of the Ethiopean community in Bet Hahistadrut:

On Purim, we met for a small event in the garden, to install, with the help of Gadi Warshavski from the municipality, a drip irrigation system. We also placed new planters, made by the same youth employment project, and finally laid the foundation for the traditional Ethiopian hut “godjo”! We are looking forward to building it together with the community in the next couple of months.

Get off the Trees!

Other than the specific fight over the green Jerusalem Hills west of the city, the struggle over our rights to nature, clean air, to live in a good place where we can raise our children in the Jerusalem metropolis is very real. In order to raise our sphere of influence, all the individual causes fighting for this green space or another, joined together in a mega event “Get off the Trees” two weeks ago as a part of the Sustainable Jerusalem Lobby. We gathered at Ein Lavan for a panel of politicians who were asked hard questions on nature preservation in Israel generally and specifically in Jerusalem. The event gave a voice to the simple citizen to demand from their (potential) Knesset members to give their opinions of what should be with the country; to stop the unbridled proliferation of an asphalt and concrete desert and preserve our open spaces which support our lives, and the lives of the future generations. [written by “Save the Hills of Jerusalem” staff]

My name is Sireen Shinhabi. I chose to intern with the JGF because I’m a true believer in its mission and wanted to contribute in order to achieve the goals. I will work with one of the partnering organizations in East Jerusalem, Kayani, which caters to the Arab sector.

Currently I’m studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and hoping to graduate this summer with an MA in nonprofit management and leadership. I am looking forward to widening my contribution to the JGF after graduation and doing more. I believe in making this world a healthier and greener place. My hobbies are cooking, swimming and reading.

Rachel Amar recently became a stakeholder as a result of Yuval’s work in NYC. She is part of the lead stakeholder group that, as mentioned above, will continue to develop partnerships in the US. She received a BA in Sociology and is a graduate in Business and International Studies from Binghamton University’s School of Management. Rachel studied Sustainability and Business at Bard College. 

Rachel has worked as an environmentalist for many years and is involved with current issues. She feels that there is always room for personal improvement, for example she is a pescetarian. Environmentalism can be traced to our Torah values as Jews and that makes her feel connected. Rachel comes from a Jewish Morrocan background and has a lot of family in Israel. This keeps her close and connected every time when visiting!  Her friends and family have influenced her environmental activism.  

Professionally, Rachel was appointed Special Assistant to the Commissioner and Chief Administrative Law Judge at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) in 2016. She has almost 30 years of experience working with communities, elected officials and government agencies in the public and private sector, including implementation of New York City’s Solid Waste Management Plan for the company she worked for at the time, the largest waste and recycling company in the nation! Rachel also worked in the non-profit sector for the Prospect Park Alliance in Brooklyn that has a public private partnership with the City Parks Department.

Personally, she likes to do Krav Maga and be physically active. As a volunteer she has helped develop and guide an NGO in Morocco that focuses on women’s initiatives.