Archive for the 'Letters from Palestine' Category

Letter from Palestine

Published
by
Hildy
on June 17, 2008
in Capacity Building, Changing the World, Funders, Fundraising, Letters from Palestine and Nonprofit Planning
. 2 Comments

I am so pleased to share another letter from Nora Lester Murad. Nora lives with her husband and three daughters in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem, in Palestine’s West Bank. In addition to her consulting work to NGOs, Nora has co-founded Dalia Association, a community foundation created and run by people who actually live in Palestine - a rarity in a land dominated by foreign aid (and therefore foreign priorities). Dalia Association’s purpose is to get beyond the politics and just take care of the people.

Nora has blessed us by agreeing to guest blog here, to share what it is like to try to run a Community Benefit Organization* amid the chaos and insanity that is day-to-day life in Palestine. You can find her first post here, and her bio is below her post.

I hope you will continue to welcome Nora and Dalia Association into your hearts.

**************************

Dear Hildy,
Thanks so much for asking about the strategic planning process we did for Dalia Association. I hope your blog readers will have some reflections that will help us in the future.

Our strategic planning process was constrained by our donor, an excellent foundation overall that tries to help applicants access funds by getting involved in shaping the grant proposal.

They suggested that their grants committee would be much more likely to approve our application if we specified that we’d be seeking an international consultant, rather than a local consultant, to facilitate our strategic planning. They said that in their experience, it is worth the expense to get an objective point of view from someone who specializes in community foundations.

Were they helping us to get a grant that we would not otherwise have gotten? Were they passing on valuable information they’ve learned from years of experience around the world? Were they driving our agenda? Or did they not fully comprehend the assets we have right here in our own community? I suspect all these things may have played a role.

The strategic planning retreat itself had some good outcomes. We invited some non-board members to bring new perspectives to our thinking, and this helped deepen our relationships with some key community members who we’ve been trying to involve. We recruited two new board members and two committee members from among those guests.

The board itself came to new clarity and stronger consensus about the need to focus on successful implementation of our three grantmaking pilots over the next 18 months.

And the international consultant became a champion for us, which I think was helped along by the drama we went through when we took a break from our planning to observe a nearby village being completely surrounded by an illegal Israeli settlement. That incident led to us all being detained and questioned by Israeli soldiers for a very tense 20 minutes or so.

But were those achievements worth one-third of our annual budget? The plan itself is unimpressive. It documents what we are planning to do and puts it into a framework that donors and others can relate to.

But is it a plan we can follow? Or is it just a good idea on paper?

As in other third world and regions of conflict, planning in Palestine is very, very difficult. True, the political situation is uncertain, but this is not the challenge. We can pretty realistically predict that the situation on the ground will continue to get worse.

We will continue to have no access to Gaza, nor will Gazans be able to reach us (which is why our Gaza board member did not participate in our strategic planning).

We will continue to be able to enter Jerusalem and Israel only when Palestinian ID holders are granted travel permits by the Israeli military (almost impossible to get). We have had to schedule all our pilots inside the West Bank, as our community organizer has been denied a travel permit.

We will continue to be delayed and frustrated by over 500 mobility barriers (staffed and unstaffed military checkpoints, trenches, concrete blocks, etc.) that divide the West Bank itself into bantustans. The occupation is something completely out of our control, but we can fairly predict how it will affect our operations.

Sadly, all of that is the predictable part of doing our work here.

On the other hand, our financial situation is unpredictable. We’ve planted many, many seeds, but because what we’re doing is so new, and most donors have little or no experience in the Middle East, it is very difficult to predict what we will or won’t get in terms of funding, which means we don’t know if we can hire more staff, expand our projects, or do any of what we have planned to accomplish.

For example, we have one donor who just this month approved our grant request for $25,000/year. We made that request in September 2006 — twenty months ago!

The delays were due to a combination of bureaucracy and indifference and arrogance, with a lot of preconceived notions, misconceptions and stereotypes added in. I say that because after we passed all the administrative hurdles, they shared that they then went through months and months and months of internal discussion about the “risks” of supporting us.

How do you prove that you’re not a terrorist? How do you prove your innocence? How do we prove we are doing real community development work, good work that is sorely needed?

We have another potential donor who is trying to convince us that our grant amounts of $3,000 are too high. They say that local donors who are poor will be discouraged to give if their contribution is so low in relation to grant amounts.

This was such a strange idea to me that I had to think really hard just to understand this feedback.

Then I realized that in the west, individuals make contributions because they want to have an impact. They want to make a noticeable difference.

But here in Palestine, that is not the motivation at all. In both Islam and Christianity, charitable giving is a regular part of the faith, and it is therefore simply proportional to income. In other words, people give money here primarily from either a religious or social obligation. They expect their generosity to be rewarded by God.

And so there is no shame in giving small amounts. Each family is expected to give in relation to their means. People don’t give because they want to affect some particular change through an organization. And if they did, they would give directly to the organization they want to support, NOT to a community foundation that will make the ultimate decision about how the funds are used.

Now we have to decide, are we going to modify our grant request to increase the chances of funding, since the donor has a specific way of looking at grant amounts? Or are we going to stick with what we know about our local environment and people? This time, I think we will stick to our own plan knowing that we may lose the funding.

Being a grant recipient certainly is helping us to get clearer and more committed to the type of grantmaker that WE want to be. Little things like returning emails, giving full attention when you talk to people, saying up front how long decisions will take rather than saying “in the next few weeks” for months and months — these are the behaviors that communicate to grantees that you respect them as agents of social change (not just as “applicants”) and that you are interested in their success in achieving their mission (not just in “completing the funded project”).

Well, I’ve wandered from the topic of strategic planning a bit. In the future, we expect our resources to become more predictable, which will enable better planning. We hope (and plan) to influence the donor community to be more accountable and responsive. We also hope (and plan) to be less dependent on them once we have more resources under our local control. I anticipate that our strategic planning will look at lot different then!

Best regards to all,
Nora

**************************

Until 2004, Nora Lester Murad combined a life of teaching at Bentley College in Massachusetts with a life of consulting to governments, foundations, corporations and community organizations on matters of racism and intercultural understanding.

In 2004, Nora and her husband moved their three daughters halfway around the world, to the Palestinian community of Beit Hanina, in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. “My husband is Palestinian, and we wanted to be near his family. We wanted the girls to grow up with a deep sense of belonging to both Palestinian and American cultures, with full access to both sides of their heritage and languages.”

Nora is now the volunteer Executive Director of Dalia Association, a new community foundation that mobilizes resources for Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian communities inside Israel.

To get updates on Nora’s life and work,subscribe at the top of this page.

Curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization?”

Letter from Palestine

Published
by
Hildy
on February 14, 2008
in Changing the World, Letters from Palestine and My Inspiration
. 0 Comments

I am so pleased to share another letter from Nora Lester Murad. Nora lives with her husband and three daughters in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem, in Palestine. In addition to her consulting work to NGOs, Nora has co-founded Dalia Association, a community foundation created and run by people who actually live in Palestine - a rarity in a land dominated by foreign aid (and therefore foreign priorities). Dalia Association’s purpose is to get beyond the politics and just take care of the people.

Nora has blessed us by agreeing to guest blog here, to share what it is like to try to run a Community Benefit Organization* amid the chaos and insanity that is day-to-day life in Palestine. You can find her first post here, and her bio is below her post.

I hope you will continue to welcome Nora and Dalia Association into your hearts.

**************************

Dear Hildy,
Thanks for asking me again to share with your blog readers what’s going on here as we try to run the community foundation, Dalia Association, here in Palestine.

Of course, these days, Gaza is on everyone’s mind. Personally, I haven’t been there for 20 years, although it’s only 1 ½ hours away. I tried to get a permit as the consultant of a well-respected international NGO, but the Israeli military authorities didn’t respond to my request. They didn’t deny my permit; they just have not responded. It has been over a year.

My husband has very high clearance through the United Nations, and he goes to Gaza twice a week. He has to move in an armored convoy, and cannot move at all after dark. As a psychologist, he is well-aware of how the endless imprisonment and slow starvation is affecting the population there. Last night he came home with yet another story - a mother whose baby won’t stop crying. She has taken the baby to three doctors and has been told there is nothing physically wrong with him. But that neither solves the problem nor addresses the mother’s fear that something must be wrong.

As a mother of three myself, one of whom had colic, I was moved by the story. I got onto the web to see if there are any Palestinian La Leche League leaders. None. I called an Israeli leader to find out if they have any Arabic speakers among the 20 or so leaders listed on their web page. None. She did refer me to an English-speaking lactation consultant she felt would be sympathetic.

When I called, the woman was having dinner with another lactation consultant, so I got two opinions. They thought the baby was too old for colic; that most likely the baby was reacting to the formula he takes for one of his feedings.

And then these two obviously decent and caring Israeli women suggested that the woman bring her baby to a lactation consultant in Israel. I explained that no one can leave Gaza without a permit - that they won’t even give permits to people seeking life-saving medical treatment.

“Oh,” they said, as if they had heard that on the news but hadn’t fully believed it. “Then we’ll go there to see her!” they said, quite sincerely. “Are we allowed?” “No.” “Oh.”

It will be hard to find special formula made for children with sensitivities. In the last 11 days, only 32 supply trucks have been allowed to enter Gaza, compared to 250 per day prior to June, 2007. Recently the population spontaneously broke the wall that Israel erected to prevent Gazans from getting to Egypt, and for a few days, there was a massive buying spree. But individuals can’t buy spare parts for hospital equipment or fuel for generators or pesticides or construction supplies. The buying spree was a psychological relief, but it doesn’t really change the indescribably inhuman conditions in Gaza.

There is so much need, and as a new community foundation with so little money, it is not easy to figure out how to help. One board member suggested we buy food for the hungry. But approximately 80% of the 1.5 million Palestinians are already completely dependent on UN agencies for food, and they can’t even get enough food in to supply full rations. What could we do?

Another board member suggested we buy a generator for a school, to at least keep some kids warm. But even if we could get a generator in, we couldn’t get the fuel in. The generator might work for a couple of weeks, but then it would be set aside along with all the other millions of dollars of life-saving equipment that can’t run because there is no fuel or spare parts.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to find out what obstacles they face and put our effort into helping those efforts be more effective?

I called our board member in Gaza for help. He knows we don’t have a lot of resources, just a lot of caring people with good networks and good will. He said people need food. Yes, I told him. People need food, but we can’t solve that problem. Gaza’s problems are so big, we can’t solve any of them. Shouldn’t we be investing in solutions?

There was silence.

My colleague then said, “Nora, we don’t know how to think like that anymore. You’re talking about long-term solutions and we’re just trying to keep our children warm when the electricity goes out up to 8 hours a day.”

Ironically, it snowed in Jerusalem this week, and the city came to a standstill. There’s only about an inch on the ground, but snow is so rare, people just stay home. I guess we put a lot of pressure on the electrical grid, because this week our power has gone out anywhere from 3-10 times a day, sometimes for 10 minutes and sometimes for a couple of hours. My 11-year old was in the shower when the power went out and since the water is heated by electricity, she was immediately freezing. The next day I nearly missed a proposal deadline because the power kept going out when I went to send the email to the donor.

Bearing these inconveniences makes me feel even more in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who cannot rely on anything — not electricity, water, food, or even the ability to safely visit elderly relatives, help a sick child or get to their jobs. Our challenge, as Dalia Association, is to keep ourselves from being sucked in by the human desire to do something that makes US feel good, but that has almost no impact whatsoever. We need to look for real solutions, effective strategies, something that few others are doing but that we can do well with limited resources. Ideas from your readers are much appreciated.

Until next time,
Nora

**************************

Until 2004, Nora Lester Murad combined a life of teaching at Bentley College in Massachusetts with a life of consulting to governments, foundations, corporations and community organizations on matters of racism and intercultural understanding.

In 2004, Nora and her husband moved their three daughters halfway around the world, to the Palestinian community of Beit Hanina, in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. “My husband is Palestinian, and we wanted to be near his family. We wanted the girls to grow up with a deep sense of belonging to both Palestinian and American cultures, with full access to both sides of their heritage and languages.”

Nora is now the volunteer Executive Director of Dalia Association, a new community foundation that mobilizes resources for Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian communities inside Israel.

To get updates on Nora’s life and work,subscribe at the top of this page.

Curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization?”

Letter from Palestine

Published
by
Hildy
on December 4, 2007
in Changing the World, Letters from Palestine and My Inspiration
. 2 Comments

Our work has blessed us with friends all over the world, who keep us grounded in the realities of life outside the comfort zone of home. Nora Lester Murad is one of those people.

Until just a few years ago, Nora combined a life of teaching at Bentley College in Massachusetts with a life of consulting to governments, foundations, corporations and community organizations on matters of racism and intercultural understanding.

Then, in 2004, she and her husband moved their three daughters halfway around the world, to the Palestinian community of Beit Hanina, in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. “My husband is Palestinian, and we wanted to be near his family. We wanted the girls to grow up with a deep sense of belonging to both Palestinian and American cultures, with full access to both sides of their heritage and languages.”

For the past two years, Nora has been focused on building Dalia Association. Dalia is a community foundation in every sense of the word community, birthed and run by people who actually live in Palestine - a rarity in a land dominated by foreign aid (and therefore foreign priorities). Dalia Association’s purpose is to get beyond the politics and just take care of the people.

Those of us who run Community Benefit Organizations* think we’ve got it rough. But try doing that work when the simple act of accepting a donation becomes frustratingly complicated. Try doing that work when a quorum cannot be met, due to roadblocks. Try doing that work when board members are afraid to leave their homes, hearing gunfire yet again.

I have asked Nora to guest blog every once in a while, to share a bit of her life with all of us, and she has graciously accepted. Today is her first post, a lighter one than many of the stories she has shared with me, but a great way to get started. I hope you will welcome Nora and Dalia Association into your hearts.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hildy, you asked me what it is like trying to run a nonprofit (in my case, a Palestinian community foundation) under Israeli military rule, and in a challenging political and cultural environment. Well, I have no problems thinking about challenges, the difficulty is figuring out what ONE thing to share.

So, I thought I might share with you and your readers about my experience cashing a check. I know this sounds boring. In the US you can just put a check in the mail with a deposit slip or drop it into an ATM if you don’t feel like driving to the bank and parking in their parking lot. For me, however, cashing a check is not boring; it is exhausting. I’ll explain.

First, to cash a check, you need a bank account. Dalia Association was registered as a nonprofit in Belgium, but despite our legal paperwork, it took nearly two months to open a bank account at HSBC in Ramallah, the main city in the Palestinian Authority. HSBC investigated the organization. They investigated our donors. They investigated our board of directors, even though they are all reputable community leaders, most of whom already bank at HSBC. And who knows what else they investigated?

During that two-month process I “stopped by” a couple times a week to keep things moving. I put “stopped by” in quotes because it takes me nearly an hour each way to go the 7 miles from my house in Jerusalem to the bank, taking two buses and a taxi through two military checkpoints. I shouldn’t complain. At least I can go through the checkpoints with my US passport, while literally millions of Palestinians can’t travel without military permits. And there are innumerable reasons why they are more often denied permits than granted them.

I digress!

We finally got a bank account. That enabled us to put a “Donate Now” button on our website using Click & Pledge (There are only two services that take donations for charities that don’t have a US bank account. The other one, WorldPay, is terribly expensive). Almost immediately we got over $500 in donations! This was very encouraging - until we learned that Click & Pledge won’t wire money to international bank accounts for security reasons.

They sent a check. Since we couldn’t get our own post office box, our mail goes to the American Friends Service Committee. It took a couple of weeks until I could coordinate with their staff person, so he could pick up the mail and I could then get the check from him. Finally, I had a check in hand for $426 - the $500 minus Click & Pledge’s fees.

I took the check to HSBC in Ramallah to deposit it into our account. They wanted a $100 fee! The check was only $426. How could I justify paying $100 for HSBC to send the check by DHL back to the US, where they would wait until it cleared and then charge us even more to wire the funds to our account?

The bank suggested that I simply cash the check at a money changer. Alas, I was in a rush to go home, so the search for a money changer had to wait until the following week. Back I went through two checkpoints to get home.

I went back a couple days later and visited FOUR money changers. None would cash the check. You have to know someone. You have to be trusted. Finally, I called a friend to see if he could convince his money changer to cash the check, based on my friend’s reputation. My friend called his money changer, and the money changer said yes! I took a 10 shekel taxi to that part of town (only about $2.50 but, believe me, it adds up) and the very nice money changer looked at my check. He said he needed a “Dalia Association” stamp on the back along with my signature. I didn’t have a “Dalia Association” stamp. Off I went back through two checkpoints, again, out of time.

The next day I called the graphic designer who made our logo and asked if they would design a stamp saying “Dalia Association” that I could use to stamp official documents, like checks. By the time we went back and forth regarding the design (he wanted to do something very fancy, a beautiful but completely inappropriate design), another week had passed.

Finally, the following week I went back through two checkpoints to pick up the stamp. It was fine. Then I took the check to the money changer and, under his watchful eye, I stamped the back of the check with my very official “Dalia Association” stamp. He took his fee and gave me $420! Good job! I rushed to the bank to deposit the money.

The bank was closed.

I’ve had that cash for several days now, unable to get to Ramallah for a variety of reasons. I’m definitely going on Monday, though, and I will finally deposit the funds into the Dalia Association account. I can’t say I’ll be completely relieved until the money is in there.

What is most amusing to me (besides the important work I did not get done because I was trying to cash the check) is that ALL of these procedures are designed to reduce the possibility of fraud and terrorist financing. And yet, in the end, I have organizational cash in my pocket, which is completely inappropriate. At this point there is no paper trail should I just run off with the money or direct it to evil ends.

But don’t let your readers fear, I am completely committed to the health and good governance of Dalia Association–no matter how difficult they make it.

Warm regards to all,
Nora

*** To get updates on Nora’s life and work,
subscribe at the top of this page. ***

Nora Lester Murad is the volunteer Executive Director of Dalia Association, a new community foundation that mobilizes resources for Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian communities inside Israel.

Curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization?”