With your help, we will raise $30,000 for the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin to support 20 women to establish their own farms. Every $1,500 raised will enable a Palestinian woman to start her own farm and bring economic security, autonomy, and food sovereignty to herself, her family, and her community.
To get these farms up and running, the Cooperative will provide education in agroecological farming, the construction of irrigation systems, and fencing for half a dunum of land. Moreover, because of the cooperative model your donation has an even greater impact, as the income from these farms will go back into the cooperative to set up more women-led farms in the future.
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We at the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV) are grateful to the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin for inviting us to work with them during this year's olive harvest.
The Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin is a Palestinian organization that works to create sustainable farms, achieve food sovereignty, provide free education, and combat environmental destruction and exploitation of the land. Through its collective model, the Cooperative also strengthens its network of farmers and families by promoting collaboration and building relationships of solidarity. Food justice, climate justice, and gender justice are at the core of the Cooperative's work.
CJNV staff and volunteers have seen first-hand how the work of the Cooperative and the inspiring ideas that fuel it are truly revolutionary – that the choices and shared practices between us as people, in harmony with nature, will empower future generations.
Palestinians in Burin, just like in countless other Palestinian communities, face incredible hardship from living under Israeli occupation. For decades, Palestinians in Burin have faced serious violence, destruction of their land and natural resources, restrictions on their movement, and wrongful arrests by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Last year, in a cruel act of collective punishment, the Israeli military restricted millions of Palestinians from accessing their agricultural lands, threatening many that if they attempted to harvest, they would be shot. OCHA, a division of the UN, estimates that Palestinians collectively lost $10M during the 2023 olive harvest because of Israel's harsh restrictions on people's freedom of movement. Most people in Burin rely on this harvest to make the money they need to live.
Members of the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin are not only doing urgently needed and materially essential work, like providing free produce to those in need, but are also creating the future they want to see right now. By creating alternative structures outside of the systems of capitalism and colonialism around them, the Cooperative is wasting no time before realizing its dream to build a thriving and healthy community and environment.
Despite facing tremendous difficulties, the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin (which was founded in 2020 is now led by nine women and six men) continues to farm more land, build more greenhouses, produce more food and grow in numbers. It is regenerating the soil and helping local communities thrive economically and culturally. The Cooperative invests 10% of its income into cultural and educational activities for women and kids, and another 10% into helping women farmers with setting up their own agroecological farm. 15 farms are currently a part of the cooperative. We are excited to support the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin to grow its impact significantly this year.
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If you would like to donate by check, please make the payment out to “Nonviolence International” with “CJNV Burin Fundraiser” on the memo line and mail it to: CJNV c/o Nonviolence International, PO Box 39127, Friendship Station NW, Washington, DC 20016.
If you have any questions, please email info@cjnv.org.
Watch below to learn more about the agroecology education project for children that the Land & Farming Cooperative in Burin was able to launch thanks to donations from international supporters last year.