Q Life Magazine Q Magazine (US) December 2015 | Page 62

| Issue 1
Qatar Partners
With American
NGO to Provide
Drinking Water
for Gaza
A
new partnership between
Qatar Red Crescent (QRC)
and highly regarded American
NGO, American Near East Refugee
Aid (ANERA), will soon be providing
clean drinking water to 120,000
people in the Gaza Strip.
In October, digging began on
a ground-breaking new project
designed to provide clean water to
three neighborhoods in Gaza City
that are still recovering from the
devastating war of 2014. That
war—the third and most destructive
in the impoverished Palestinian
enclave in the last six years—resulted
in more than 2,000 deaths and
massive infrastructure damage.
Thirty percent of the water supply
was disrupted, and more than
a year later, over a hundred thousand
people remain homeless.
Since the 2014 war, QRC has
funded and implemented water and
sanitation projects for nearly 200,000
62
people, but this is the humanitarian
organization’s first major initiative
involving an American agency.
Saleh bin Ali Al-Mohannadi, QRC
Secretary General, welcomed the
new partnership.
“QRC has at the top of its priorities
the service of Gaza’s people,
who live in severe humanitarian
conditions,” Al-Mohannadi explains.
“We try to fulfill their basic needs of
healthcare, education, shelter, water,
and sanitation.”
For their part, ANERA has
partnered with USAID on
a number of other water projects
in the Occupied Territories. But this
project is much bigger—and the
first major partnership with Qatar.
“We looked at creative ways to move
forward whole neighborhoods,”
Bill Corcoran, President and CEO
of ANERA, explains.
The Gaza water project isn’t
ANERA’s first partnership with
Qatar; they have previously worked
with Reach Out to Asia, a Doha-
based NGO, on various early
education and vocational initiatives
in Lebanon. “But this is a new
chapter, a different approach,” says
Corcoran. “We just want to work
together, because we think two heads
can do more than one.”
ANERA started as a temporary
committee after the 1967 Arab-
Israeli war, formed by a group of
Americans who wanted to ease the
refugee crisis in Palestine. “From
the start it was apolitical,” explains
Corcoran, “focusing on economic
development, not lobbying or finger
pointing or political advocacy—they
wanted to try and answer immediate
needs. And we’re still doing that.”
These days the NGO spends about
$60 million a year in aid projects,
almost all focused on Palestinians
living in Gaza, the West Bank, and
Lebanon. Most of the actual work
is done by locals, not foreigners.