Gaza Urban Agriculture Platform (GUPAP) won the International Spring Prize for influence.
The winning was announced during a ceremony organized by the Forum and the Global Prize team today in Gaza in conjunction with the global celebration held in the UK at the same time.
The award team was contacted via Zoom technology, with the wide participation of Urban Agriculture Pioneers Forum members, members of the forum, and the forum’s international friends, partners, and supporters of the Palestinian people around the world.
This award comes as a culmination of the Forum’s efforts within the modest capabilities during the past few years in influencing policies, forming local forums, enhancing the resilience of women entrepreneurs and farmers in the agricultural sector, building their capacities and raising their voice, as a contribution to disseminating the concepts and practices of the food sovereignty approach, as the Forum is a member of ten national and regional networks and forums. It aims to enhance the resilience of local food systems and enhance the principle of food sovereignty. In the past few years, the Forum represented West Asian organizations and the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty in the Coordinating Committee of the Civil Society Mechanism of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security and was elected as a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Global Network for the Right to Food. The forum also made a number of reviews of the Palestinian agricultural policies, fact sheets on the challenges in the agricultural sector, and pioneering work under occupation, siege, and epidemic.
The ceremony included two sessions, where the Forum’s friends around the world praised the Forum’s role in working to strengthen resilience and rights, in addition to congratulating the Forum for receiving the award, a precedent of its kind for an emerging Palestinian institution that seeks development and food sovereignty in Palestine in the face of the policies of the occupation.
The second session included a presentation of success stories of models and achievements from Gaza, and a presentation of local products, with continued emphasis on the importance of quality control to achieve sustainability and the importance of supporting the local product in light of the difficult conditions experienced by the Gaza Strip and Palestine.
At the end of the ceremony, the attendees praised the importance of moving forward in strengthening the steadfastness of the forum’s members and building their capacities in light of the marginalization suffered by the women’s entrepreneurial work sector in Palestine, and in light of the neglection of the local product in general and women in particular.
