Launching Crowd-Funding Campaign For “Flying Gardens” Project
Launching Crowd-funding Campaign for “Flying Gardens” Project
- Youth volunteers from UTOPIA Organization launch a crowd-funding campaign for their community development project, “Flying Gardens” in Tabbaneh, Tripoli -
Tripoli, Lebanon, April 20– Youth volunteers from UTOPIA Organization in Tripoli launched a crowd-funding campaign early April on ZOOMAAL, a crowd-funding platform that makes it easy for innovators in the Arab world to get their work funded. The campaign aims to mobilize funds needed to implement their community development project, “Flying Gardens”. The project entitles gardening rooftops of buildings in the most underprivileged areas of Tripoli, Tabbaneh. The rooftops will be planted with edible plants and vegetables in order to make residents of the building self-sufficient. It will also include a safe playing space for children of the building instead of having them spend times on the streets and in unsafe surroundings. Environment-friendly and recycled materials will used to rehabilitate the rooftop. The rehabilitated rooftop will also allow for the conduction of regular cultural, youth dialogue and social inclusion programs as well as self-motivation workshops.
UTOPIA volunteers had previously started with a pilot step whereby they rehabilitated a building rooftop in Tabbaneh. The residents’ feedback was overwhelmingly welcoming, however, the volunteers could not continue for financial reasons. After doing the necessary needs assessment and financial feasibility, they concluded that they are in need of $30,000 to fully equip 6 rooftops in the neighborhood with children games, books, a reading/cultural space made from recycled and reused material, painting and drawing, planting edible fruits and vegetables that building residents can make use of, and most importantly to implement safety measures such as high fences and roofing.
The crowd-funding campaign continues ZOOMAAL until the beginning of June and aims to fully mobilize an amount of $30,000 by the aforementioned date. To that end, the youth volunteers are disseminating awareness on the goals of their campaign through social media networks and also through providing motivational in-kind prizes for individual donors, and diversified sponsorship packages for corporate donors.
For more information, please visit: www.zoomaal.com/p/flyinggardens and www.facebook.com/utopialebanon
Or contact the campaign leaders at: [email protected]
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About UTOPIA Organization
UTOPIA Organization is a non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to abolishing all types of social discrepancies through specialized projects and programs that rely on voluntary work, in hopes of acquiring social justice among people within the same society regardless of their political or religious beliefs. The purpose of UTOPIA Organization is to inspire a culture of civic awareness and equal citizenship in the Lebanese society and in Tripoli in particular to make the anticipated change. UTOPIA Organization relies heavily on voluntary work for achieving its mission. Volunteers are the backbone of the organization and they come from all the walks of life: they include professionals as well as enthusiastic school and university students. Initiatives of UTOPIA Organization fall under the following pillars: Community development, youth empowerment, women empowerment, youth development, and advocacy issues.
About “Flying Gardens” Project
The project entitles gardening rooftops of buildings in the most underprivileged areas of Tripoli, Tabbaneh. The rooftops will be planted with edible plants and vegetables in order to make residents of the building self-sufficient. It will also include a safe playing space for children of the building instead of having them spend times on the streets and in unsafe surroundings. Environment-friendly and recycled materials will used to rehabilitate the rooftop. The rehabilitated rooftop will also allow for the conduction of regular cultural, youth dialogue and social inclusion programs as well as self-motivation workshops. Tabbaneh is one of the most deprived communities in Lebanon as a whole. Studies conducted by the ESCWA over the past couple of years, revealed that some 87 percent of households in the Tabbaneh area are considered deprived, and out of these, about 52 percent live in extreme deprivation. Poverty and neglect have long marked Tabbaneh and are major contributing factors to the ongoing cycle of violence there. Tabbaneh is characterized by a high concentration of children and youth, but it is also well-known for high school dropout and high youth unemployment rates, standing at roughly 50% and 40% respectively. With such difficulties, come different forms of social misbehaviors these children and youth engage in to “kill time” such as drugs and alcohol abuse and alarming acts of violence. Therefore, childhood is almost a non-existent phase for majority of residents there. Instead of having a healthy childhood, children and youth often find themselves spending their time on the streets and being exposed to deadly dangers. And this is where the idea of “Flying Gardens” came from.
For more information on UTOPIA Organization, please contact:
Shafik Abdulrahman
Programs Manager - UTOPIA Organization
[email protected]
Yehia Harb
Project Coordinator – UTOPIA Organization
[email protected]
