Celebrating the Right to Life, Food and Shelter for Women and Bees in Adversity
Our programme for areas where conflict and adversity deny women the right to life, food and shelter.
The World Bee Project’s pioneering 2019 programme successfully established apiaries for 15 Palestinian women on the rooftops of their homes and created little rooftop gardens, enabling them to develop promising new livelihoods through the sale of honey and ‘rooftop bee tourism’. The programme was funded mainly by the Sobell Foundation in the UK and others.
The 2019 beekeeping training was led by Yossi Aud, founder of Bees for Peace.
Matan Israeli, founder of Muslala, and Tariq Nasser, town planner, assisted with the programme. It was supported by the Municipality of Jerusalem Department of Employment; Ir Amim, an Israeli activist non-profit founded in 2004 that focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Jerusalem; Matti, a non-profit organisation focusing on employment; and the Jerusalem Green Fund, an Israeli non-profit organisation focusing on sustainability and environment in Jerusalem. The World Bee Project gratefully acknowledges their support.
In 2019, the previously unemployed women started selling honey from the beehives on their rooftops.
Nothing of this kind had ever been attempted in East Jerusalem.
In response to the exhilaration and enthusiasm the programme generated in East Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Municipality (Department of Employment and Social Welfare) offered its support. The East Jerusalem Central Library offered its terraces to create a new community centre where beekeeping training and workshops could be hosted, and thus in 2021, Matan Israeli, Yossi Aud and Tariq Nasser founded the Sinsila Center.
A vibrant community of Palestinian women beekeepers now thrives in East Jerusalem. We are happy and proud that the East Jerusalem authorities were pleased with the 2019 outcomes, and beekeeping training for Palestinian women in East Jerusalem will continue under their aegis.
The World Bee Project programmes Celebrating the Right to Life, Food and Shelter for Women in Adversity programmes are endorsed by Human Rights lawyer Professor Phillipe Sands, KC.
The World Bee Project continues to support women in communities suffering from conflict and adverse socio-economic conditions. In 2022 we launched a new 3-year programme supporting 80 tribal women in Tamil Nadu, India.
The women began to produce honey from their rooftop hives in 2019 and the Sinsila Center was founded in 2021.
