Organic rooftops farm in Palestinian Refugee Camps

Today in Lebanon, people are hopeless and feel they endure a lot for a single people; financial crisis, unrest, pandemic and Beirut explosion that finished to put the country on its knees. For camps inhabitants, jobs are lost since a long time now, while less and less people can expect financial help from relatives living abroad, due to the Global pandemic issue which lets refugees worldwide in a dire situation and unable to help their relatives still in the Middle-East.

Giving inhabitants the opportunity to retrieve contact with earth, the natural and simple ways to grow crops and the ability to be self-sufficient became for Jafra Foundation a priority.

Through the Rooftop Farming project in Palestinian Camps, Jafra could, during the last months, improve the skills people need to master in order to grow sustainable farming projects. Training procedures and follow-up on families’ rooftops became regular. Check Nazmieh for example, she was having an empty rooftop and now she can eat from what she planted on it!

Very soon, the project will take a new level as we are planning to cooperate with an INGO to increase the number of Rooftop Farms in 3 different Palestinian camps of Lebanon. You can help the beneficiaries to go smoothly through winter by helping us providing them the material to create greenhouses to avoid flood and cold affecting their crops and livestock.

10^th of November 2020

Links:

• Rooftop Beneficiaries Interviews

Report 1^st of July:

Nowadays in Lebanon, following the long-term Syrian Crisis, the ongoing melt-down of the Lebanese currency and the recent and still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, refugees living in the Palestinian camps are every day in greater danger of hunger. Many of those who still had a job before the pandemic lost it. Market prices have followed the rate of exchange of the Lebanese Pound against the Dollar; once fixed at 1500LL for 1$, it can hit 9000LL for a single $ currently! Most families are not able anymore to provide enough food to get the minimal daily nutriments.

When we launched the Organic Rooftop Farming Project, situation was already dire, but we didn’t expect to reach that extend of needs.

The donations received through GlobalGiving allowed us to prepare the base of 3 rooftops where beneficiaries are able to seed, germinate, grow-up and harvest organic vegetables and herbs. The 3 rooftops are also a place to train other beneficiaries who wish to transfer the idea on their own rooftop. Through other projects, Jafra helps them to get seeds, pots and soil as most of them can’t even afford them.

Through other projects too, we could also provide the material to do organic compost on one rooftop. We’ve installed a system to collect rain water. We thus now have prepared 1 rooftop that gathers all the necessary elements and skills for organic vegetable production as well as organic eggs and poultry production, in order to assure protein income to the family beneficiaries.

We still need your financial help to be able transferring the full idea in more than 1 rooftop. We consider self-reliant food production will soon be the only way people of the camps will be able to eat. The economic situation of Lebanon is every day worse, situation in the camps is even harder.

Links:

• Training on organic rooftop farming