New Energies Project

Coalescing to Promote Renewable Energy Alternatives

The New Energies Project addresses the impending energy and pollution crisis in Israel by advancing proactive, viable energy options beneficial to all of Israel's citizens, with an emphasis on bio-fuels and solar applications. The project proffers replicable and cost-effective models of post-carbon applications in off-the-grid communities. Our workshops highlight the  modern-day income-generating potential of renewable energy forms as a tactic to resist discriminatory government policy on resource distribution. 

BUSTANIM Learning Sites Project

Merging Traditional Skills with Green Technologies

In the interest of promoting local, sustainable initiatives towards self-sufficiency, BUSTAN coordinates learning sites at the request of Negev/Naqab villages. BUSTAN’s leading experts connect low-income citizens lacking access to resources and services with cost-cutting green technologies which can bring them to a new level of food and energy security. As Negev Arab communities work for tangible advancements in health, education, and economic viability, these sites remain as learning centers for the passing on of traditional knowledge in the midst of ground sweeping change in the Negev. The project advances modern environmental technologies while highlighting the viable modern-day income-generating applications of traditional knowledge. Learn more.

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Negev Unplugged Grassroots Advocacy Project

Conveying the Spatial Politics of the Negev/Naqab

Through grassroots awareness-raising activities such as tours, lectures, and media events, BUSTAN exposes entrepreneurs, students, bureaucrats, human rights advocates and citizens to a process of critical questioning. Citizens come to understand cleavages between environment and industry; tradition and modernity; Bedouin and State; and ethnic-religious-class divides among Negev/Naqab inhabitants, all within a larger-scale geo-political framework. We take citizens into remote communities disconnected from the regional utility grid and seemingly unplugged from the democratic system, as well as to meet decision-makers at the other end of the political spectrum. Learn more.

Health Justice Project

Galvanizing Grassroots Action & Research in Contaminated Areas

Since its inception, BUSTAN has worked to advanced health justice in contaminated areas. This project aims to document, analyze, and expose the proximity of environmental hazards to Jewish and Arab inhabitants in marginalized communities as a tool to further strategic community mobilization. One of BUSTAN’s most internationally recognized projects to date involved organizing hundreds of Bedouin and Jewish youth to build a sustainable medical clinic in Wadi el Na'am, adjacent to the largest toxic waste facility in the region. A year after clinic completion, and after decades of failing in its obligations to provide services, the government finally built a clinic on the other side of the village. This year, BUSTAN's medical clinic garnered nomination for the largest architecture prize in the world. Learn more.

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