Recognizing Partners

MCC works with a variety of partners here in Palestine Israel. Our three main areas of focus are peace work, community development, and relief. Some of our partners do incredibly interesting and effective work, and we want to recognize and highlight two of them in this post.

One of our partners, The Lajee Center, works in Aida refugee camp, which is located directly next to Bethlehem in the West Bank. Lajee means ‘refugee.’ The center works with children from Aida to help provide them with opportunities they normally wouldn’t have. Lajee has a library, computers, and provides an outlet for the children’s creativity through various art programs. One such program is their photography program. Through volunteers, the children are taught about photography and how this can be a means for expressing themselves and telling their stories. Recently one of the children from Lajee won first prize in the Al-Awda Awards festival in the category of ‘Photograph (photographer under 18)’. You can find MCC’s previous profile about the Lajee Center here.

Another of MCC’s partners is Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), headed by Dr. Jad Isaac. ARIJ works in community development through water conservation and geopolitical research. MCC is proud to partner with ARIJ and would like to note that ARIJ was recently recognized as winning an award from UN-HABITAT and the Dubai Municipality in the category ‘Best Practices’ for ‘outstanding contribution towards improving the living environment.’ You can read about the project, ‘Wastewater Management on Household level in Palestine,’ here. Some of MCC’s work with ARIJ can be viewed here, where MCC and ARIJ helped the village of Nahalin build a wastewater treatment plant.

MCC is incredibly proud to be working with so many Israeli and Palestinian partners who do such meaningful work. These are just two examples of some of the many organizations MCC partners with that are working towards the realization of God’s Kingdom for the people that live here.