The Israeli movement encourages the establishment of neighborhood committees in Haifa:
(lives here in the neighborhood) - Many dozens of residents came yesterday evening to the Rambam Synagogue on Middle Street in Neve Shanan, in order to hear how neighborhood committees are being established. The goal is that in as many neighborhoods as possible, neighborhood committees will be established and start operating, which will work in cooperation with the municipality. The meeting is designed so that activists from the neighborhoods take the reins in their hands and they will start working and promoting the different neighborhoods in the city.
The activists arrived at the hall at 19:30, enjoyed refreshments, talked among themselves and thought about how they could be more active and positively influence the course of life in the city.
Social activists led the meeting:
The meeting was led by social activists such as Mimi Peretz, Einav Perla, Eran Shulman and Tomer Shalu. The evening was moderated by Paz Glickman, who said that for him Rambam is his second home.
The purpose of the conference is to lead a move to strengthen civil power in many neighborhoods in the city. The conference is organized by residents from 10 neighborhoods and "Movement Israel" and during it there were 3 lectures in which case studies from other settlements in Israel were presented where resident organizations were able to influence the urban space.
A neighborhood activity that takes place all the time
It should be noted that some neighborhoods in Haifa already have neighborhood committees, for example in Neve Shanan and Bahadar. There are neighborhoods where there used to be a council, but over the years the activity of the neighborhood council has decreased and now the residents do not know at all who they can turn to when needed. In the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, board elections are held and there is a very active board. The neighborhood has a group on Facebook and WhatsApp, and every keychain, dog or toy that gets lost finds its way to the neighborhood group so that each Akida is returned to its owner.
Activity of the neighborhood committee
The committee also does bigger things. The committee is in regular contact with the municipality in order for it to assist in the maintenance of the playgrounds in the neighborhood. Every year the municipality decides which playgrounds to renovate and rehabilitate and the committee devotes great efforts so that the money also reaches Ramat Eshkol.
Several inspiring lectures
In the first lecture, the social and personal consultant Rachel Tadhar Kener, who lives in Kiryat Tivon, told how in 2016 she started to establish a movement, which ran in the local elections of October 2018. She explained that those who want to head the neighborhood committee can learn from her experience over the years.
Also attending the conference was Eli Debi, who was a key activist in the fight for the recognition of the bereaved siblings, which recently bore fruit with the passage of the law in the Knesset, which states that it is necessary to inform a brother or sister of someone who has fallen and not just the parents and see him as a factor in himself over the years. Billy Baruch, who was a political activist in the 2018 elections and remains a social activist, also came to the conference. The Likud council member, CPA Eli Dayan, also came to the evening.
The organizers are satisfied
Yesterday evening was a success and everyone left satisfied, but what is important is what will happen from today onwards. Will neighborhood committees really be established in neighborhoods where until today there were no such committees and will they succeed in promoting the interests of the residents of the neighborhood?
"We are very satisfied with the number of people who came to the conference," said Mimi Peretz, "Our goal is that the activists from the neighborhoods will take action and improve the situation. We have to take care ourselves, that it will be better here, and it is exactly these people, who care about what happens near their home, who can make the change".
About the building where the conference was held
The Rambam school and synagogue are located in the heart of Neve Shanan, in the middle of Middle Street, which, as you can tell from its name, is in the heart of the large and old neighborhood. The school is a center for the youth of Bnei Akiva, it has a food distribution center, and a lot of activities take place there beyond the school and the synagogue.
Kalish tried and succeeded in weakening the position of the neighborhood committees during her tenure
When Mayor Dr. Einat Kalish Rotem took office, she said that she did not attach great importance to the neighborhood committees and even called the committees "fiction", a statement that infuriated many. Now the Israeli movement is coming to Haifa and is helping activists in the neighborhoods to re-establish the neighborhood committees in the city. Her goal is to establish ten neighborhood committees in the city.
We will continue to follow this intriguing move in the near future.
Who knew about the convention. It was kept a secret?
I didn't see any outdoor advertising
I propose as the first issue to address the skyrocketing cost of living in all the Carmel neighborhoods and also in other Haifa neighborhoods as far as they are from commercial centers and that is the lack of competition in supermarkets when all of Haifa is dominated by Shufersal almost exclusively. There is no Rami Levy in the Carmel Ridge. There is no Yohannoff. why? There is no reason why they should not build large buildings for them that could give competition to the expensive Shofersal in Israel to lower prices. The committees should demand the establishment of a large supermarket or two of several thousand square meters in the Carmel Ridge area from discount chains that would compete with Shofersal. For example, in Givat Zemar there is space for a commercial center where the supermarket could be enlarged to about 2000 square meters that would serve everyone who travels in Hankin and bring a competing chain to Shofersal On the other side in Ramat Sapir.
Michal. First of all, thank you for the support..
I was born in Haifa and from the age of 17 as a youth guide I was a social activist in the fight to stop the transfer of coal in Haifa. I have always been involved in social activities in the city and in 2006 I also led the struggle of small businesses to Jerusalem. Today the time has come to take the city into our hands, the politicians ran the city for us and trampled it. The day that my two 23-year-old children fled to Tel Aviv after military service in combat units, I raise the flag of the struggle to return the city and the pride in it to the residents.
Peace be upon you, many raised the banner of the struggle to "bring back the young people" and the truth is that the skyrocketing housing prices somewhat did that and here we have the Talpiot area that is recovering from the initiatives of those returning to Haifa. The problem is that it is not enough. Every time some nucleus arrives, tries and gives up or disperses. What is needed is a mass. What does that mean? This means a thousand young people returning to Hadar, each renting/buying an apartment, opening 20 cafes and bars, opening 20 new galleries and entertainment spaces, retaking control of Beit Maccabi and Atzmon Cinema and Ron Cinema and similar buildings and turning them into clubs for recreation or fitness spaces and workshops, making market stalls and creating In Nordau like Benjamin's estate. Hadar is being cleaned of the Arsiada and crime by increasing housing prices. This is how Hadar is restored and we all know it for example from Florentine.
The problem is that there is not this mass of a thousand young people. In Tel Aviv there are waves of students who create an active city (otherwise there was a nursing home and crime areas there too). In Haifa, high school students who graduate do not think of staying in the city because it does not offer cool and active environments with a young atmosphere. If Hadar or the lower city was like this, many would stay and even return to Haifa if they studied for a few years in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. This idea is not new, they have tried a student village in Hadar and other initiatives that brought a few dozen, but you need a few hundred and you need a few strong nuclei that will create places for recreation and that requires budgets. Starts a little with talphiots, but the fear that the talphiots will not have enough mass. We need to bring a lot of entrepreneurs to Hadar, about 50-60 entertainment entrepreneurs, who will reopen restaurants and cafes.
It is a very difficult process and the municipality does not know how to support and produce it. And now it's hard at all because Hadar has deteriorated to a distressed neighborhood. 5 secular schools were closed. At least one more public elementary-high school should be opened in Hadar so that young families can stay there. These are processes that, even if they start, will take 10 years to mature. And they don't start because there's no big initiative, just sporadic things that fade away.
If Paz Glickman runs for the city council we will all benefit
Hope he chooses to be a member of the city council (if not a member of the Knesset)
A righteous cliché that testifies to fiction, she just didn't explain why. During the Mitzna period there was another 1.7 million NIS in a contact clause with the neighborhood committees. It was a small fund of Mitzna for propaganda purposes and half of it was used by him, to finance his active branches in Wadi Nissens and the Hafen and therefore he also renovated the bottom of Wadi Nissens so that it would be a sector "in his pocket". Another half will be maintained by several toothless neighborhood committees, most of them bored labor activists whom Savion recruited to vote for him in exchange for budgets for some experiment here, television in a nursing home there..
The militant committees were in Carmel against wild construction and the destruction of the Carmel to the road, a bridge on pillars above Gan Ham and other destructive delusions of Mitzna, whose roadology was his forte and public transportation he hated death and tried to eliminate the Carmelite and the buses, well he never really used it, he always had a car Close military and then a car survived... disconnected is disconnected.
Yahav took the budget for the relationship with the neighborhoods and transferred it to his spokespeople for a little more fictitious propaganda (this is how Tarno mobilized the media to side with the failed mayor, a million shekels for additional advertising of "conferences" in Shoken and Yediot. Then the budget went to buy the hosting of the beauty queen or the finale of a star is born. Let it be Lihav loved opportunities to jump on stage.
Yahav eliminated the committees where it was convenient for him and nurtured them as vote pools for inclusion in the unrealistic 5-10 places on his list (mainly from Golda, Ramat Dania and Ramez). That way he could say that he has representation on the list for the committees, and on the other hand, not give them permission for any activity after the elections. Klish didn't invent the method, she just applied it again, this time to the Neve Shaanan Committee. There Barbie's shouts were the main activity of the committee, but at least they could say that there was one (he continues to shout for nothing in the council to this day. The main thing is that they hear him on cameras..).
In short, the committees in Haifa have long since faded away, the public does not know or understand them and what they are working on. The organizations are sporadic and there are no community managers like in Jerusalem for example where it is possible to influence planning and urban priorities. The result is a steep decline in the quality of life in all Haifa neighborhoods, each with a different excuse as to why councilors will no longer solve the problems of a dysfunctional municipality where money is siphoned off for senior pensions and salaries.
@עמרי, it is good that there are also residents like you with Phil's memory, who can tell how the root of the problem dates back to the days of previous mayors, over twenty years ago. Unfortunately, every time a different person comes to blame the current mayor for all the ills of the city created by her predecessors.
It will take years to repair the damage of the past and it is impossible to complain about every problem that previous mayors created for many years, and expect everything to be fixed in one term. In my opinion, the repair was started by the current mayor and the trend has changed for the better, but you can't do everything at once. Give her time to fix at least as much time as you gave the previous ones to spoil.
Accurate summary!
there is plenty to discover
I would love an article that guides you on how to join a neighborhood committee.
respect!
Maybe we can stimulate and provide more individual treatment to each neighborhood and its problems.
How can I join a neighborhood committee?