Wussoul : Mobile Community Center

Due to the overall circumstances imposed on the Palestinian community in West Bank and Gaza Strip, people face a real series of challenges that decrease the chance of accessing community services and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) services.

Before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the CSOs took the responsibility of providing services to people that the occupation did not provide. However, in that era, the civil society actors worked more dependent on charitable donations and voluntary efforts. Then, after the establishment of PA, the work of CSOs was mainly in the marginalized areas that were not accessed by PA such as these areas are classified (c) areas, in addition to the areas close to the Israeli settlements, and military campuses. These areas were the most vulnerable and people there are in need of daily support to overcome the challenges and difficulties they face. Moreover, residents of these areas are among the most marginalized social segments. Indeed, the well-being and psycho-social services were the least to receive focus from donors.

Unfortunately, most of the interventions of CSOs were project-based and reach an end with the end of the project cycle, which prevented the creation of a real development context in Palestine.

Wussoul help to expand the role of the community center by developing a Mobile Community Center (MCC) that will access marginalized people in their residential areas to provide them with well-being and psycho-social services. The overall objective of the action will be: To contribute to improving the quality of life of marginalized people with a focus on women, children, youth, and persons with disability. The action will have two specific objectives: 

1. Decrease the psycho-social pressure imposed on marginalized women, children, and youth in the marginalized areas. 

2. Develop the capacity of the target groups to contribute to the public life of the community actively.

By addressing issues such as psycho-social pressure, trauma and post-trauma symptoms, the role of mothers in combating psycho-social pressure, violence and GPV and its impact on the community, alternative violence tools, dealing with children under pressure, the role of individuals in supporting others during crises time.

Targeting 20 localities in the West Bank governance, targeting women, children, youth, and persons with disabilities: 

1) Ramallah: Deir Ammar Village, Deir Abu Mashal Village, Silwad Village, and al- Mughayyer Village.

2) Bethlehem: Walaja, Batteer, Housan, Nahhaleen.

3) Nablus: Assseera, Ein Refugee Camp, Burien, and Madama.

4) Salfit: Burqeen, Bidya, Deir Ballout, and Deir Istya.

5) Jordan valley: Fassayel, Marj Na’ja., Jeftlek, and Nassariyya.

The empowerment of people and strengthen their resistance to self-need a great effort, can not be done without faith in leaders and managers of its importance and its benefits are often needed to develop individuals and their abilities and skills to solve problems and confront and challenge it, to create a citizen is able to adapt to reality, and enable it to meet current and future challenges safely according to Human rights and humanitarian international and Palestinian resolutions. We in Nafs want an empowered Palestinian Society, enjoying psychosocial welfare, psychological health, and social justice.

By interacting with many different segments of our Palestinian community we felt the need of empowering these kinds of people who are marginalized and do not have access to Civil Community Center services to discuss their psychological needs in order to solve their problems.

We are applying for this challenge because we felt the need for our community to be stable psychologically. We felt the suffering of reaching the community centers due to the geographical barriers between areas ( A, B, and C). This legal issue causes people not benefiting from community center services and consultations. wellbeing and psycho-social services were the least to receive focus from donors or even the local culture of Palestine.

Community centers usually located in cities. Being so, poor marginalized segments, had no access to these locations and consequently, did not get the possibility to benefit from the services. Community centers are essential to ensure the sustainability of interventions and creating change within the community, but their role remained limited as being based in the central cities. We as Nafs are headquartered in the city of Ramallah in an easily accessable location, a group of people are able to reach to us, but on the other hand many people are not. Here, the idea of the Mobile Community Center came, we felt their need of accessing community centers, so we decided to go to them in their residential.

Our project is unique because no have done it before in Palestine. The idea of the project is to expand the role of the community center and develop Mobile Community Center (MCC) that will access marginalized people in their residential areas and provide them with services. The proposed MCC will be the tool to implement the various activities of Nafs in the field through qualified staff and in a safe environment.

Provide some groups (youth) with physical space to meet and discuss their issues and ambitions where the outcomes of these discussions took the form of community local initiatives. Youth received guidance and support that enabled them to lead their initiatives and add s value to the local communities.

Create youth leaders through developing their capacity in the field of leadership where these activities contributed to enhancing youth’s role within the community.

Recruit other organizations to deliver activities (not addressed by Nafs) to target the groups with whom the organization works. Among these activities, were activities related to raising youth’s awareness of human rights and documenting violations of human rights that were conducted by specialized organizations. Additionally, entertainment and cultural activities were implemented by some specialized organizations targeting the beneficiaries with whom Nafs for Empowerment worked.

Provide target groups (women and children) with space to practice some entertainment activities in an environment accepted by the community.

Provide reference and resource of materials for target groups as the community center of Nafs provided library and access to information centers to demanders.

Help target groups realize their needs and search for resources to fulfill these needs by opening room for them to coordinate with interested organizations.

The action will have two specific objectives: 

1. Decrease the psycho-social pressure imposed on marginalized women, children, and youth in the marginalized areas.

2. Develop the capacity of the target groups to contribute to the public life of the community actively, in order to improve the quality of life of marginalized people with a focus on women, children, youth, and persons with disability.

The organization will coordinate with local actors (CBOs, CSOs, local governance bodies, and local councils)  in order to make the MCC more accepted by beneficiaries. Nafs for Empowerment will coordinate with some organizations to be hosted in the MCC to conduct some activities like educational activities about human rights and promoting democracy such as Shams- Center for Democracy and Human Rights where there is an MOU signed between the two organizations to conduct joint activities.

Debrief activities such as drawing and painting, drama and psychodrama, duo drama, role-playing, music therapy, art therapy, and play therapy will target school students and parents councils in each school. There might be more than one group targeted in each village during the work day in a place as the MCC will be placed there for an adequate duration to conduct the maximum possible activities. Some activities might go in parallel such as group counseling and debrief sessions.

Group Counselling: Depending on the space that the MCC will provide, group counseling sessions will be conducted for small groups who face similar challenges. Based on the contacts and coordination with the local organizations, Nfas for Empowerment will form groups of persons facing the same troubles and challenges (women who lost a beloved, persons with disability, and so on, to receive group therapy sessions and create their resources of support for each other. Individuals identified to be in need of further intervention (individual counseling) will be referred to specialized organizations to receive the service or be targeted by Nafs itself in a special intervention program.

The main outcome of the project will be a Community Center that will be active in the mentioned locations where activities are implemented as work days including Raising awareness, Debrief Activities, Group Counselling, Hosting other organizations, and Conducting two cultural activities.

In this project, we will use mainly social media and the internet in order to create an easy platform for those who are in need of our help, by posting our activities and achievements during the project. Also, this will help others figure out our innovative solution for the problem and then use it or develop it. By that, the idea will spread and be wildly taken which will make the project sustainable everywhere and mainly in our community which is in need of it.

Surely, we will use cameras and drones in order to picture the events and activities in order to post them on social media.

Our staff is the main collectors of health care data because we are usually in the field feeling the struggles and the problems of our community. We do so because the main goal of Nafs is to help people and empower them to deal with reality and improve their psychological and mental health. That is the main problem we need to have a solution in order to raise and develop the community.

We believe that differences are making us so appealing and attractive. , and we would not be as beautiful if we are all the same. In Nafs the diversity of the leaders and the staff are what makes us create an innovative change in the community. We are from different backgrounds, some of us are from the city, others from the village, and others from refugee camps. Also, we are from different genders almost 30% of us are females and we intend to increase this percentage by accepting more professional staff in order to support them to be active persons in the community. On the other hand, we also serve different kinds of people from women, adults, youth, and persons with disabilities.

Additionally, the main reason for our institution's sustainability is the environment we provide for each member of the staff from safety, accepting other opinions, equity, welcoming others to join us in order to benefit from their experiences, and respecting their opinions and experiences.

Our key resources are external donations that will serve our activities which are psychological and social consultations, creating empowered people who are willing to adapt to reality according to Human Rights and humanitarian international and Palestinian resolutions. We serve different segments of our community from children, women, youth, and persons with disability in order to make them psychologically stable and empowered. The cost of structure goes mainly to our staff because we are providing services provided by professional staff in the field of psychological services.

Based on the success of the idea, Nafs will endorse the MCC as a component of its major programs and will continue raising fund for it from other resources. Additionally, funding the project by Solve will encourage other donor agencies to fund it in the future and build on the success of the experience.

The staff that will operate the MCC will gain distinguished new experience that will be part of their future work. The staff will learn how to operate MCC and even they will contribute in transferring the gained experience, skills, and knowledge to their counterpart employees.

There are many examples of activities from fundraising organizations that helped us to stay financially sustainable, we will mention the latest one of them which is a project titled Activating the Role of Youth in Volunteer Work. This project was funded by the Greman Corporation (GIZ). For the first 6 months of 2019, the project was held in the east of Ramallah villages, then another 6 months of 2020 the project shifted to the west of Ramallah villages. 

In 2022 a project titled Masahat was funded also by the German Corporation (GIZ) for 1 year, which was a complementary project to the first one. The idea of the two projects was to create a space for voluntary work and a safe space for participants to practice their freedom by creating initiatives -based on their needs created by them- that will help the community to be developed based on how they want to see it.

In Nafs, we create unique and creative ideas that help us to stay sustainable financially and socially.