Shifting away from aid dependency
Palestine faces challenges, but it is also full on local changemakers taking initiatives to make people’s lives’ better on the ground. Build Palestine was built on the premise of gathering support for those local changemakers: by creating the first crowdfunding platform dedicated to supporting local Palestinian initatives, Build Palestine is one of the most impactful organizations on the ground. The crowdfunding model is extremely powerful, as it allows a multitude of projects to be supported simultaneously.
Crowdfunding is a powerful tool to decentralize the traditional donor model. It allows a large number of people to contribute small amounts of funds, ultimately providing the project with the funds needed to make an impact. — Build Palestine website
One of Build Palestine’s stated goals is to shift away from traditional international aid, which on top of leading to cycles of dependency, has been drastically cut in recent years. Build Palestine’s co-founder, Besan Abu Joudeh, rightly states that “the challenge with international aid is that it comes with institutions’ own directions and projects”. On the contrary, Build Palestine takes a new approach: empowering local changemakers to solve the problems they see in their own communities. This new approach to development is succintly synthesized by Aisha Mansour, the founder of the Dalia Association, an organization seeking to also shift the development paradigm.
People know that the traditional aid is not sustainable, distorts the economy, among other issues,” Mansour said. “We’re part of a global community movement that believes that real development happens locally with local resources by the indigenous community.” — The New Humanitarian
Different initiatives
Over the years, Build Palestine has integrated a plethora of different ways to accomplish their vision of supporting local changemakers in Palestine. Their crowdfunding campaigns feature incredible initiatives, which you can support from anywhere in the world. Check out a list of their successful campaigns here.
On top of their crowdfunding campaigns, Build Palestine has launched a number of other initiatives aimed at achieving their mission. Get involved in the one of your choice by clicking on their names.
- Impact Network: The BuildPalestine Impact Network is a partnership of organizations committed to promoting social innovation and working collaboratively to make a positive impact in our community. Members of the Impact Network have direct access to BuildPalestine’s global members who are looking to support the work of these trusted organizations. Our role is to amplify the important work of our partners (nonprofits and social enterprises) by connecting them with people, resources, and funds.Each year, we work with a cohort of 10 organizations to help them run fast and effective fundraising campaigns, connect with experts and volunteers from our global members, and reach a wider audience through the curated content our team makes.
- Social Innovation Bootcamp: The Social Innovation Bootcamp takes a human-centered approach and leverages design thinking to guide social entrepreneurs through the stages of ‘inspiration, ideation, and iteration’ focused on the pre-incubation stage. BuildPalestine’s role is to empower individuals to design thoughtful and impactful interventions for their communities. Through this program, aspiring Palestinian social entrepreneurs get access to guidance, mentorship and resources throughout their entire journey.
- BuildX: The BUILDx Social Innovation Series provides a platform for our community to learn about social innovation, exchange knowledge, and collaborate with each other to build a better future.Each month, BuildX hosts a 1.5 hour event on a topic relevant to social innovators. Our goal is to bring together bright social changemakers to give talks that are idea-focused, and on a wide range of subjects, to foster learning, inspiration and wonder — and provoke conversations that matter to the social innovation ecosystem in Palestine. Check out all of the BuildX interviews and events on Build Palestine’s Youtube channel.
- Social Innovation Summit: The Social Innovation Summit is an annual global gathering of dreamers and doers, coming together to imagine, build, and celebrate. Their theme for the 2020 summit was “Radical Imagination”. You can rewatch the event by clicking here.
How to get involved
Build Palestine allows people to get involved in a variety of ways: a good place to start is by checking out the events listed above! Depending on your skillset and time availability, feel free to either support one of their crowdfunding campaigns, offer your services as a mentor/advisor, or simply volunteer with one of their affiliated organizations!
Find Build Palestine on social media, either on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter.
Who are we?
GrowHome is a platform connecting diasporas to entrepreneurs back home. The problem we’re trying to solve is twofold: on one hand, diasporas often gain professional and financial resources abroad which they want to share with people back home, but they have no easy way to do so. On the other hand, entrepreneurs in emerging countries have incredible talent, but lack access to business opportunities. On GrowHome, diasporas can mentor, collaborate and fund entrepreneurs from their home countries.
We are launching our BETA product in Jordan and Palestine, early 2021.
To get updated on our progress, follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube.
Listen to the GrowHome podcast on Spotify, in which our founder Marwan Abdelhamid interviews successful and impactful Arabs in the diaspora and locally.
