Support Water Sovereignty Skills in the West Bank

We are raising funds for a course to teach Water Retention Landscape (WRL) design and implementation in Palestine, in the village of Irtas.

WRL is a method of utilizing water to its fullest potential, through earthworks, rainwater harvesting, and ground water recharge. This is a crucial skill in water-scarce lands, as it allows people to have sovereignty in their land, and to recharge their own wells. This is especially important right now in the West Bank, where settlers and Occupation forces dispossess local Palestinian farmers from their water sources and springs, making it no less than a matter of survival.

This course will take place as an 8-day learning community, which 15 local farmers, and 15 international students of permaculture will learn the design principles and methods of WRL, and they will have the opportunity to gain tangible experience implementing earthworks on a local site.

During this workshop we will bring together local indigenous technology with innovations from other water scarce regions, and we will facilitate a process of collective wisdom to implement solutions together.

This course will also offer opportunity for income generation for local businesses and educators in the West Bank, where the economy has suffered greatly since the start of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing on many Palestinian villages. We intend to compensate all suppliers generously for their time, and also expose international permaculture activists and land stewards to the reality on the ground in Palestine.

Please help us make this happen, so we can bring tangible tools for self sufficiency, sovereignty, liberation, co-resistance, and stewardship to the land and the people of Palestine.

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The host organizations are Salsola Group (based in the US) and Fallahi (led by Palestinian citizens of Israel). The facilitators of this educational workshop are Jawdat Kassab, Katie Wachsberger, and Mahmoud Jabr. The expert agro-ecologist teaching the course will be Saad Dagher, with support from Tamera (Portugal). There is no institutional or NGO funding for this course presently, and we have decided to do a crowdfunding campaign in order to maintain neutrality, which ensures safety for Palestinian participants.