Prawer Won’t Pass Campaign in the Negev came about to prevent the passing of a draft law from the Israeli Minister of Planning, Ehud Prawer, destined to confiscate more than half of dunums of the land and expel 70 thousand people from their homes in 20 villages. The law would prohibit the people of Negv to own land, especially irrigable land and to live in restricted areas. The core team was founded and Ahel accompanied the campaign in strategy workshops resulting with a strategic goal and an expanded structure that is based on Community Organizing, to prevent the law from passing in the Kenesset. The campaign created a movement in 34 cities through a tactic that was called ‘Day of Anger’. The strength of this campaign was in its ability to mobilize numerous activists in Palestine with a clear and specific goal. The Israeli government ‘froze the law’; or in other words Prawer didn’t pass as a result of an organized community mobilization.

The campaign was to resist Israeli discrimination laws and policies that prohibit family unification of a Palestinian from Israel married to a Palestinian from anywhere else. The campaign lasted for a year in which the issue was highlighted at an international level. They organized a wedding at the checkpoint in Historic Palestine ,in which the groom came from the Occupied West Bank and met with the bride at the checkpoint. The event was broken up by the Occupying Military and the groom was arrested among others, however, it received major media coverage that brought back the cause to attention.

In the fifties of the last century, the Zionist Regime took the decision to integrate the Druze community into the body of the occupation and make that a normal matter, and in which it abided them by law to perform compulsory military service.

After the success of the Prawer Won’t Pass campaign, a group of activists in the north asked Ahel to support them to launch a campaign to encourage the Druze youth to resist the obligatory army service in the Israeli Military. They began to form an organized campaign to refuse service. The goal of this group is to persuade as many young Druze as possible to declare their refusal to serve in the occupation army. During the first year, they were able to persuade 70 young men to publicly refuse to serve. The campaign has a deep strategy and smart tactics that contribute to achieving the change. The campaign lasted for 4 years, despite its constant exposure to many challenges and threats to stop its organizational work. To this day, the campaign’s impact is still ongoing to encourage more Druze youth to publicly refuse to serve in the occupation army.

The campaign started in 2016 and was led by students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The campaign was founded from the need to create an Arab-Palestinian cultural space that embraces Palestinian culture for Palestinian students, and to support the campaign team’s participatory collective presence with each other. Over the years, the campaign succeeded in engaging a large number of Palestinian male and female students in spaces of thought and culture that affected their personalities, citizenship and identity. The campaign faced several attempts to stop it from the occupation authority, and this confirms that the cultural struggle is of great importance in building strength and achieving change.

This campaign was formed by young leaders from various Palestinian camps in Lebanon and aims to activate the social committees on the basis of their internal system established by the higher bodies of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its specialized departments. The campaign seeks to do this because it believes that the internal system contains a framework that guarantees a just life for the camp’s residents, which unfortunately is not implemented in reality.

The campaign, led by Syrian families located in different countries around the world, seeks to demand the disclosure of the fate of their detained family members in Syrian prisons and their liberation. After the Syrian war started, many activists in Syria were detained and the majority of the activists’ families don’t know in which prison they are being detained, or even whether they are alive or not. The campaign has established organizational teams in several countries that work on pressuring the international community to achieve their demand. The campaign also implements different tactics to create bonds, trust and communication between the families of the detained.

With the support of Women Now, a group of Syrian refugee parents in Lebanon founded and led a campaign that aims to reduce the rate of child marriages in central Bekaa in Lebanon. In its first phase in 2020, the campaign succeeded in getting 2000 families to submit a written commitment publicly not to marry their girls, and prevented 13 engagements for girls from these families. The campaign also won the support of 5 municipalities and 8 religious figures for its cause. In its second phase that began in 2021, they expanded their base by recruiting men and now aims to stop 55 early marriages before they occur. It is proceeding with success. Read case study here.

In a small area in Amman, called “Jabal Al-Natheef”, a community-based organization called Ruwwad Al-Tanmia, is located. Ruwwad adopted the approach of community organizing as one of its theories of change. It began experimenting with the approach in the 6 Minutes campaign. 6 Minutes Campaign aimed at increasing the percentage of readers in the Jabal Al-Natheef area. Specifically increasing the habit of readers for joy. With the practices of community organizing and in accordance with its essence of empowering the strength and resources of the people of the cause, mothers and youth from Jabal Al-Natheef led this campaign. Starting with one team and concluding the campaign with 23 teams, 161 organizers (mothers and youth) led to the reading of more than 5000 people in the neighbourhood. Read case study here.

From the successful leadership experience of the 6 Minutes campaign, some leaders took it upon themselves to build a new campaign, aimed at stopping domestic violence in homes in Jabal Al Natheef. During the 6-minute campaign for reading, it became clear that many children preferred not to read because they were reprimanded in their education experience. The campaign succeeded in stopping the violence in 164 homes, as the families in these homes went through an empowering path led by the other parents in the area. The campaign incorporated tools in parenting based on awareness and dialogue. Dr Hala Hammad, a specialist in parenting, who accompanied this journey.

A campaign led by male and female students with disabilities at the University of Jordan, with the aim of creating an accessible environment for students with disabilities in the University. The campaign succeeded in bringing changes to the buildings like ramps and access to elevators and larger bathroom doors. It also succeeded in bringing changes to teaching methods like increasing the examination time for persons with disabilities by a minimum of 30% and appointing female sign language interpreters for students majoring in sports.

With the leadership of 9 mothers from Gaza camp in Jerash, Bihimouna was formed, to demand that Gazan refugee children with disabilities living in Jordan are granted health insurance that guarantees their access to medical treatment and aftercare across all medical centers in Jordan.The campaign started with organizing leaders to lead the effort and mobilize the community to put pressure. Through house meetings, they rallies signatures on the petition they created and they are now preparing to submit the petition to decision makers.

La Sharaf Fil Jareemah (No Honor in Crime) is an initiative that led essential efforts on the issue of honour killings in Jordan. It focused on creating an archive of victims’ issues, and holding meetings to discuss concepts of dignity, freedom and true honour. The initiative later decided to create a campaign aiming to bring about tangible change in the cause. The “Where We Stand” campaign aimed to change the Jordanian Penal Code so that it eliminates the possibility of parents ‘forfeiting their Personal Right’ in cases of murder within the family. One of the important tactics in the work was for campaign members to visit families where a murder occurred, to speak with the victim’s family and encourage them not to forfeit their personal rights against the criminal.

Ibni, meaning both my child and build, was founded by the families of children with disabilities and people with disabilities in Jordan. With lack of vocational rehabilitation services for people with disabilities in governmental health centers, families were emotionally and economically exhausted. Without these health services, people with disabilities are prevented from being equal citizens and face health dangers that are unnecessary had they enjoyed their right to health care and vocational rehabilitation.

The campaign’s strategic goal in 2021 was to get the Ministry of Health to declare its commitment to equip 12 health centres with vocational care services for people with disabilities before the end of 2022. After a series of collective action, and creative tactics, the campaign succeeded in signing a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health and the Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The MOU agrees that the MoH will prepare for and equip 12 rehabilitation centres across Jordan during 2022. The campaign continues to monitor and hold the Ministry accountable to its implementation plan.

The campaign aims to activate and implement Article 72 of the Jordanian Labor Law, which obliges the employer of 20 or more female workers who have children under 4 years old, to provide them with childcare services within the institution. The campaign efforts paid off in the amendment of Article 72 of the Jordanian Labor Law; as it became obligatory for the employers, with at least 15 workers (both female and male) which children under the age of 4, to provide daycare services under the custody of one or more educator to take care of them.

A campaign led by fathers, mothers, young men and women, from Al-Hosn Refugee Camp in Irbid. The objective was to make the residents of specific neighbourhoods in the camp adhere to habits that ensure the cleanliness of their streets and their buildings especially as UNRWA was facing challenges in maintaining the wellbeing of the camp. The campaign relied on the tactic of house meetings between mothers, and the tactic of a children’s competition to collect waste on the street. The campaign succeeded in activating more than 100 children and 70 parents in joint cleaning activities of the camp and in changing certain behaviours around that.

A campaign in Amman that aims to protect children from sexual harassment. In 2020, the campaign aimed to protect 150-200 children (3-16 years old) from possible sexual harassment by ensuring that 75-100 parents take action with their children. The campaign leaders activated the parents through tactics that help the parents intervene with intentionality with their children so that they are aware of their bodies and familiar with the concept of harassment and how to act in case they are threatened.

The Al Aqsa All the Wall Campaign seeks to activate Jordanians, Muslims and non-Muslims, to defend and protect Al Aqsa. This would be achieved by spreading and consolidating the importance of protecting the Al Aqsa Mosque with its total area of ​​144 holy dunums which is threatened by division by the Israeli Government. Each year, the campaign empowers teachers in public schools in Jordan to transfer knowledge and awareness to students about the area of ​​Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jordan’s role in protecting and defending it.