IDENTIFYING SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Great idea.

Should we find an example?

The number one reason is adversity. A common enemy.

Yes Amigo, we need to find examples. In recent years, I have seen many in the media...I just wasn't making a list then. I shall look and return!

Yes Amigo, we need to find examples. In recent years, I have seen many in the media...I just wasn't making a list then. I shall look and return!

At the moment, I am without a sound system. Take a peek at this video on YouTube and let me know whether it has some possibilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTT2lVXlZig

I had hopes some others would share their knowledge of such projects/activities/people...I misjudged the interest level. As time becomes available, I will identify such items and share the information with you.

One of the interesting connections with the primaries is Obama's background in community involvement/communication. As I understand it, his group has secured thousands (millions?) of $100 contributions/commitments. Does anyone have details/sources to confirm that situation?

the villages of yaad and miaar in galillee, northern israel. this is what i do at work, so forgive the cutting and pasting, but it was already written:

Yaad is a small community of 120 families, established in the 1980's and erected at the foot of a hill, on what used to be the fields of Miaar, a Palestinian village that used to be on the hilltop for ages. Miaar's inhabitants were evacuated during the war of independence in 1948, and the Israeli army destroyed their houses in the 1950's. Many were scattered in some of the neighboring Arab villages, while others fled to Lebanon and Jordan. Some elders are still alive, and carry vivid memories of their lives in the village and the evacuation itself (Abu Zaki, one of the elders, has only this wish: to return to the old village site and live there. "A tent will do," he says, "that, and to die and be buried there").
What used to be the village center is now just remains: stones from the buildings, waterholes and tombstones. Many elders and descendents visit the village and cemetery from time to time.
During the 1990's, government policy forced Yaad to expand and increase the number of its families from to 120 to 250 (if not, money would be taken away), leading to debate within the community of Yaad regarding the directions of expansion. At that time, there was only minor awareness of the injustice and hurt caused to the Palestinian population in general, and in Miaar, specifically. In 2000, the erruption of violence scared the inhabitants of Yaad - the forests around them were on fire. They wanted more security. Thus, eventually, the hill was part of the direction chosen, with a vague reservation that the neighborhood on the hill would be built "sometime in the very far future…" This future proved to be not far off, and the planned encroachment on this hill only deepened the divide between these two settlements, errupting into occasional violence.
BUT
Since 2004, a group of elders from each side met regularly to discuss the hilltop, the future, but usually most of all the messy past. They are still in a dialogue today, the third round of it. They have not become best of frieds, but they did work out impressive things:
• The fencing in of the Muslim Cemetery that is within the jurisdiction of the Jewish community, an effort that would be done for the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel
• A joint effort to establish a new Arab settlement in the Galilee, likewise the first since the establishment of the state
• A joint campaign to allocate and develop public, green areas in the Arab villages, also unprecedented
• A shared campaign to eliminate and correct institutional discrimination against the Arab population
• Joint cultural, culinary, and sports activities, family-to-family meetings, the creation of Jewish - Arab recreational centers
• The creation of an archive to preserve the history of the two communities

Exactly, histories like this need to lifted up. Dag, can you keep us up to date or possibly identify someone within those communities who has the computer skills/accessibility to the internet...someone to share this account of living history.

Dag, we have meet before...thank-you, so much!