Project Detail

Environmental Town Hall Debates

The objective of the proposed project is to enhance the capacity of SGP grantees and other relevant stakeholders to raise awareness of environmental issues through media and thereby actively impact and influence civil society as well as government policies. The action is seen as the next step to the networking and visibility effort conducted with NGOs working in the environmental sector during the Knowledge Fair in 2013. It is seen as increasingly important since the downgrading of the former Palestinian Ministry of Environmental Affairs to the Environment Quality Authority this year and the evident lack of an environmental lobby effectively influencing environmental policy in Palestine.

The implementation of the action will take place over eight months and includes a variety of capacity- building and awareness-raising activities. In the first month a consultation workshop will be held with twelve Palestinian NGOs working in the environmental sector and a representative from the EQA in order to identify the most pressing issues. Following the workshop they will receive two- day training on how to make use of traditional as well as social media in order to campaign for environmental issues generating support from civil society and thereby putting pressure on the government. Building on the experiences made within the project Environmental Knowledge Fair the aim is to work with the most committed NGOs working in the field of environment, jointly selected by the IMM and GEF. On the basis of the issues selected in the consultation workshop AQTV will produce ten TV reports (about 5 min lengths) in cooperation with GEF and the respective NGO. Based on the TV reports ten town hall debates will be organized in different areas in the West Bank where decision- makers, NGOs and other relevant stakeholders will be discussing the presented issue in front of an audience consisting of local community also giving civil society to participate in the discussion. The town hall debates will be filmed and edited (about 50 min lengths) and broadcasted on a Palestinian Satellite Channel (Ma?an) as well as AQTV. The TV reports as well as the filmed town hall debates will be available online on the websites of the respective NGO, the website of the GEF Small Grants Program and the Hona Al-Quds Community Network. The events themselves will also be covered through the Hona AlQuds Community Media Network through radio and written reports.
A final report will document the project implementation, participants, results and lessons learned.

Project Snapshot

Grantee:

AL-Quds University

Country:

Palestine, State of

Area Of Work:

CapDev

Operational Phase:

OP5-Y3 (Jul 13 - Jun 14)

Grant Amount:

US$ 35,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 9,500.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

Project Number:

PAL/EU-NGOs/2014/01

Start Date:

2/2014

End Date:

11/2014

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Project Characteristics and Results

Gender Focus

All of IMM?s projects incorporate a gender-sensitive approach and are conducted in a carefully non-discriminative manner. The environmental town hall debates as well as the surrounding outreach activities are designed to attract a diverse audience, e.g. people with different backgrounds, of different gender and age. Based on the assumption that environmental sustainability can only be achieved when all parts of society are involved in the discourse, the activities within the proposed project aim to be accessible to everyone. All activities will take place in socially accepted locations and socially accepted times, so that there are no barriers to the participation of women. Equal access to environmental resources will be addressed as well as the participation of women?s environmental organizations will be specifically encouraged.

Notable Community Participation

Environmental civil society organizations as the major stakeholder will be active part in all stages of the project; close cooperation and coordination is required and will be ensured throughout the entire project: The selection of the NGOs that will participate in the project activities will be conducted in cooperation with the GEF grants department. The selection criteria will be based on the experience with NGOs that have been active during the implementation of the Environmental Knowledge Fair and have shown positive interaction. This participation prerequisite is meant to ensure ongoing commitment during the implementation of the activities. The NGOs will benefit from the media capacity building training as well as the increased attention for their scope of work are additional motivations for their participation.

Replication of project activities

The communication of project results will be in part the responsibility of the Hona AlQuds Community Media Network, which will cover project events, results and successes through radio and written reports. These will also be posted online and be available on different partner websites. Other project activities will explicitly target at spreading knowledge and increase awareness for the environmental challenges and problems as well as solutions to them: A 4: Production of 10 TV reports about the most pressing environmental issues A 5: Organization of 10 town hall debates A 6: Broadcasting of town hall debates on a Palestinian Satellite Channel All media pieces produced within the project will be available online and cross-linked on the websites of all parties involved. Through the use of social media a wider audience will be reached. Finally, the final report submitted to the donor agency will sum up project implementation and results.

Project sustainability

The impact aimed at with the proposed project is to increase the media capacity of NGOs working in the environmental sector in order to enable them to promote sustainable development and improved environmental management through more effective civil society participation in environmental governance. The increase in capacity of the selected partner NGOs will benefit them long- term and will strengthen the impact of civil society organizations working in the environmental sector. The project will only be a starting point for an increase in civil society support for environmental issues and their participation and influence on environmental governance, made possible through enhanced use of media tools by the target NGOs with an environmental mandate. Through the project links will be created between environmental organizations and media outlets, which will contribute to an increased coverage of environmental topics and issues, which on the other hand will lead to a strengthened environmental awareness of civil society. The goal of the involvement of government representatives, especially from the EQA aims at firstly, ensure their support and in that way add to the success of the project and secondly, increase the sustainability of the project through partners on a decision- making level influencing environmental policies in the long term. The audio-visual material produced and distributed within the project, the produced TV reports (A 4) as well as the filming of the town hall debates (A 6) will be available online on the websites of the different partners involved in the project. In that way they will stay accessible to an online audience and spread the projects message even after the end of the project duration.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

The overall goal of the project is to enable SGP grantees and other NGOs working in the environmental sector to use media in a more effective way in order to advertise their work as well as increase community awareness on the importance of environmental governance. It follows that an improved and more systematic knowledge management by the partner NGOs is one of the main outputs of the project. Furthermore the IMM will make sure that all conducted activities as well as project outputs will be documented and widely distributed and shared: - Multimedia coverage of project activities and results through Hona AlQuds Community Media Network -Production, broadcasting and uploading of ten TV reports on selected issues - Discussion of selected issues during town hall debates in front of an audience consisting of local community - Production, broadcasting and uploading of ten filmed town hall debates on selected issues

Project Results

The expected results (ER) of the proposed action are:

ER 1: NGOs/ CBOs and a representative of the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority (EQA) have actively participated in a consultation workshop identifying key issues of Palestinian environmental sector;

ER 2: Ten GEF grantees and other NGOs working in the environmental sector have increased media capacity enabling them to improve their media presence and raise awareness on environmental issues;

ER 3: Civil society awareness is raised through ten TV reports on the most pressing environmental issues, which are broadcasted and available on various websites;

ER 4: Public dialogue on environmental issues is stimulated through ten town hall debates triggering discussion between decision- makers, NGOs and the local community;

ER 5: Pressure is applied on decision makers in favor of environmental governance through the broadcasting of the filmed town hall debates and their online accessibility

ER 6: A final narrative report capturing and documenting the implementation, results and lessons learned as well as a detailed financial report are conducted

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