WeWorld has been present in Palestine since 1992. A presence that has been renewed and adjusted, year after year, to meet new solutions to a long-term crisis with the aim of activating development processes that go beyond the emergency.

The context

Our intervention is aimed at promoting the full inclusion of both the resident Palestinians of the Area C and those living in the Gaza Strip, promoting new forms of social and territorial cohesion that can mitigate the depressive impact, in terms of human, social and economic development, which is a consequence of the fragmentation imposed by the occupation.

We were one of the first humanitarian organisations to sign the operational framework agreement for the implementation of emergency projects in 1993, the day after the establishment of DG ECHO, the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.

With the first health interventions involving the basic community organisations, in 1997 we built the first blood transfusion centre in the Gaza Strip, which is still operational, in collaboration with the Central Blood Bank of Gaza.

From that date onwards the partnership with the European Union for the creation of projects of cooperation aimed at mitigating the permanent humanitarian crisis consolidated in the years has allowed us to carry out humanitarian projects in the South of the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

Together with our local partners we have identified the difficulty of accessing water resources as one of the most urgent critical issues and in recent years we have built and restored more than 750 cisterns within the community and schools; we have built and restored over 150 wells and springs; we have renovated tens of kilometres of rural roads to ensure connections between the communities and reduce the costs of water distribution for areas not reached by water networks; in addition, we have built tens of kilometres of aqueducts to connect the communities not yet served.

Furthermore, all our interventions are accompanied by awareness-raising and capacity-building campaigns, in order for the beneficiaries to manage all the infrastructures built in an autonomous, sustainable and efficient way in the shortest possible time.

Since the early years, our intervention in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as that of our partners, has been to guarantee the Palestinian communities of these areas the coverage of all the basic primary needs.

An intervention that has been renewed and adjusted, year after year, to meet new solutions to a long-term crisis with the aim of activating development processes that go beyond the emergency.