In winter, there is often heavy rainfall in the Gaza Strip, which often leads to flooding in the streets of certain neighbourhoods. Added to this is a shortage of drinking water due to high groundwater pollution and a lack of functional infrastructure to produce drinking water. In both cases, the blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip (with Egypt's complicity) for 12 years is largely to blame. However, the young people of Gaza are not discouraged and are mobilising alongside the population of their neighbourhood.
Young people in Gaza are running a campaign in their neighbourhood with the slogan ‘A clean tank for clean water’.’
After the heavy rains of 2018, young people involved with our partner Union of Health Work Committees mobilised to ask the authorities to clean up the streets and implement sustainable solutions to prevent future flooding. Thanks to their motivation and the discussions they had with the relevant authorities, the young people succeeded in bringing about change! The authorities drained the water with the support of the young people and local residents. They then set up a rainwater harvesting system so that the water could be redirected to agricultural land and used by farmers during periods of drought.
That's not all. The young people ran an awareness campaign called «A clean cistern for clean water», which aimed to encourage families to clean their cisterns properly so that the water stored in them does not become dirty and dangerous to health. To ensure the campaign's success and monitor water quality in the neighbourhood, the young people created a Facebook page with community residents. This page is very active and allows them to discuss problems encountered in the neighbourhood and find solutions together.
