IN STEREO

I would say the campaign by itself is sustainable from sponsorship and donations. But we want individuals to be involved in this. I want to collect a little bit from a wide number of people. I prefer this way because I want people to know what we do. We want to raise awareness; we want to advocate. I want as many sponsors to come as farmers take trees, because I want to connect [them]. There should always be a balance. So I focus on reaching out to individuals and collecting all this money, from ordinary people to ordinary people. I facilitate. We talk to our partners – schools, universities, churches, YMCAs, YWCAs, environmental organisations – and we ask people to sponsor an olive tree. We are in touch with them the whole year. Of course, we do a lot of brochures, articles, statistics, papers, you know. Newsletter, videos, films, stories. We travel and do events: in the UK, Europe, America, Canada. We have good partnerships where we also work with schools. The whole school does fundraising.

Before asking people to sponsor an olive tree, we explain to them what our life is like under occupation. We have the stories of the farmers, not only about the tree and the agricultural sector, [but] about everything. We [talk about] the suffering of the farmers – the Israeli laws, the land confiscation, the separation wall, total control, the bypass road, the checkpoints, the settlements, the inhumane action from the Israelis. That’s how we collect thousands and thousands of olive trees every year. We buy the trees from Palestinian nurseries then distribute them to the farmers: in Hebron, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gaza. We give them the trees, we bring people to plant [them, and] sometimes we bring a tractor to fix the land. The condition is that the farmers plant them in Area C, and they should follow up with the tree to make sure it’s good. – Muhanad