{"id":11090,"date":"2011-09-22T10:07:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T06:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=11090"},"modified":"2011-09-22T10:09:40","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T06:09:40","slug":"the-palestinian-women-who-dared-to-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/the-palestinian-women-who-dared-to-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"The Palestinian Women Who Dared to Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At the Women\u2019s Society in Burqa, a Palestinian village of 6,000 residents 30 minutes northwest of Nablus, women greeted us with three kisses each \u2013 right cheek, left cheek and then right again. We were eight months into Women Supporting Women, a nine-month programme started by the Dalia Association to build women\u2019s capacity to decide how to use community development resources and mobilise their own capacities.<\/p>\n

The first few months of the project had gone smoothly. We developed relationships in each of the five villages we had selected to participate in this project and established our credibility by being sincere \u2013 a rare commodity in today\u2019s opportunistic culture. In each place, women nominated themselves or were nominated by others to represent their village. We met several times with the 15 elected women leaders to discuss their ideas, capacities, assets and priorities.<\/p>\n

But after the first few months, the women got stuck.<\/p>\n

Every time our staff came back from the field, they reported, \u201cThere is no money. There is nothing we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we kept going back to ask them: \u201cWhat are your priorities? What do you want to make happen for your villages?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer was always the same: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

We kept going back.<\/p>\n

After months of hearing, \u201cThere is nothing we can do\u201d, we too were out of ideas. It seemed the project might fail.<\/p>\n

According to our analysis, the problem was the post-Oslo \u201cdevelopment industry\u201d that undermines small-scale voluntary work and discourages use of local resources. So we divided the women into three small groups to select a project that we would fund through a small grant that would be matched by local resources which the women would fundraise.<\/p>\n

In a mini-revolt, they insisted, \u201cWe\u2019re stronger as a group. And we want to build a park.\u201d A park? But our total budget was $6,000!<\/p>\n

But we kept going. We kept taking that nearly two-hour trip in taxis driven by suicidal drivers with fellow passengers who either blew smoke in our faces or fell asleep on us. We kept going past major intersections that led to important Palestinian cities, but were marked only with Hebrew signs identifying Israeli settlements. We passed through checkpoints with 20-year-old soldiers pointing automatic weapons at our heads.<\/p>\n

We kept going because we believed in these women.<\/p>\n

We found a planner from Nablus who passionately wanted to participate. In a brainstorming session, he challenged the women.<\/p>\n

\u201cDream!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The women were uncomfortable at first. Then, as though a dam had broken, so did the women\u2019s resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want a swimming pool,\u201d one of them called out, giggling and covering her mouth, embarrassed at sharing such a ridiculously impossible idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want an outdoor theatre,\u201d said another, looking around to see if others were laughing. And the list went on:<\/p>\n

\u201cA children\u2019s playground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA picnic area.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA wedding hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA fountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA cable car!\u201d<\/p>\n

Who knows what allowed these women to overcome the \u201cthere-is-nothing-we-can-do\u201d mentality. Maybe they dared to dream because they figured their dreams were impossible to realise. You can\u2019t build a park for $6,000! It was just a game \u2013 a game they played beautifully.<\/p>\n

But when the planner and his team of volunteer architecture students returned with the first design of the park, the women were shocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did that?\u201d<\/p>\n

The layout of the park was beautiful. It was a place where human beings could be human; where children could have fun and learn; where families could relax together; where important cultural events could take place. The women saw what they had created, and they hungered for it. They began to sing a new chorus, a chorus of \u201cHow can we make this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon, local supporters and volunteers were everywhere. The women realised that people wanted to give. It didn\u2019t matter anymore how much money they had or didn\u2019t have. What mattered is that they could get resources by networking strategically. Their energy multiplied exponentially.<\/p>\n

Since then, the project has been held up by politics, but nobody is worried. The dreams that have been unleashed in five villages north of Nablus cannot be denied. Even if Dalia Association quit the project now (and we won\u2019t), it would continue without us in some form or another.<\/p>\n

The success of the park is not assured, but the success of the project is clear. Fifteen women supported one another to figure out how to do supposedly impossible things for themselves and their communities because they deserve it. That\u2019s social change that cannot be reversed.<\/p>\n

Nora Murad is an independent researcher and consultant living in East Jerusalem. She is a volunteer with the Dalia Association. This article has been posted on the 1001 Stories of Common Ground website and was a finalist in Positive Change in Action Competition. To learn more about the Dalia Association, visit www.Dalia.ps<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NORA MURAD, CGNEWS: How do you encourage women afflicted by a ‘can’t do’ mentality to build a park? By challenging them with one simple word: ‘Dream’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":11091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,90,482,5],"tags":[18342,726,111,3602,18297,133,177],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11090"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}