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Blog: CHF Executive Vice President Chris Sale Visits CHF Projects in the Middle East (Part 3)
Published 05/04/2011 by Global Communities
CHF Executive Vice President Chris Sale Visits CHF Projects in the Middle East (Part 3)
On the last day of her trip, Chris Sale CHF’s Senior Vice President and COO visits a “green” community center built by CHF and meets the people behind the project.
On to Nablus where we visited the Safeer Children’s Center which provides a safe and clean environment for children under 12, who are members of a 1,500 camp population. Children receive education, recreation and social support provided by contributions from the local community. They now do so in a CHF built center, which is not just new, but “green” and one of the first examples of environmentally friendly construction in the country.
The building design recycles gray water for the garden; has special insulation to reduce heating costs; includes roof designs which provide sunlight while managing shade to protect the interior in heat; and is beautiful to look at and be in. For me, an added benefit was meeting the four young women engineers who helped design it and who are very proud of what they learned in building it and in what they have achieved.
Later, in the town of Nablus, we visited the Jabal Annar Youth Club. This is also a CHF infrastructure project but this time in a 1930s house near the historic area of Nablus. The house has been renovated, preserving old tiles and architectural details, but upgrading the utilities so the center can provide job training, computer classes, and other activities to support youth in preparation for adulthood. The club serves approximately 2,500 children and youth in the area.
It has been a long but fruitful day. It pleases me no end to see how our staff are able to ensure that we are making sure we provide holistic development, that in each instance the capital improvement is accompanied by learning and transfer of management processes so there will be longstanding benefit from the support we are able to provide “from the American people” as so much of this work is funded by the US Government, AID.