Hope for peace springs from conservation efforts
JERUSALEM — For Dr. Gerald Sussman, a water shortage a world away in the Middle East, amid tensions between Israelis and Palestinians ever ready to boil over, was never too big a project to tackle.
The head of international programs for the Coral Springs-Parkland Rotary Club and the club’s past president, Sussman saw in Israel’s water crisis not so much a problem as an opportunity. A researcher by training, with a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, the 83-year-old Coral Springs man is the epitome of Rotary’s can-do optimism and its commitment to working with young people.
His initial idea was to examine how rainwater harvesting could help alleviate water scarcity in Israel and neighboring countries, if done locally by individual communities. By partnering with the Rotary Club of Lod, a small city southeast of Tel Aviv, a small cross-cultural group began to teach students at the school there how to conserve water through harvesting.
“In a short time, the rainwater harvesting was supplying all of their water needs, from kitchens to toilets, and so much more,” Sussman said. “But Israel only has a few months of rainwater during the year, and water that is harvested is unusable after about two weeks. So, we quickly realized that this method wasn’t sustainable.”
Still, Rotary International had the project on its radar. The community service organization, which has an estimated 33,000 chapters and 1.2 million members worldwide, saw what was then called Rainwater Harvest as a prototype for the projects it now funds through its global water initiative.
Rotarians in Israel, in the meantime, introduced Sussman to Dr. Amnon Shefi, founder and director of Hi-Teach, which develops educational programs focused on engineering and technology. In Sussman’s project, Shefi saw a bridge — one that could bring together different middle- and high-school student populations in Israel.
While some integrated schools exist in Israel, most are separated by religion or ethnicity, whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or Druze.
And thus, in 2011, Rotary’s Hands Across Waters project was born. The project brings together students from different schools to work on science projects relating to water conservation. Through inter-school collaboration and joint field trips, students not only become more educated in the science behind global water conservation technologies, but also learn more about each other.
Every year, students choose a research project on an area of water conservation and sanitation. Some groups find ways to address the water leakage problems, while others research the role of robotics in conservation or study the structure of antique wells. The students visit each other’s schools and take trips together, including to the Water Technology and Environmental Control Conference in Tel Aviv.
Sussman is passionate about Israel. He also wishes to see a peaceful Middle East. With the growth and development of Hands Across Waters, Sussman and members of the local Rotary chapter are helping to lead what he sees as a “building block for peace.”
Sussman believes the key to overcoming hate is generating peace from the bottom up.
“It’s been over 70 years, and the politicians haven’t achieved much,” he said in a recent interview, referring to the long-standing conflict in the region since Israel declared independence. “If we’re going to get along, it’s got to start in the schools.”
And indeed, the project has been extremely successful. Hands Across Waters has received two global grants from Rotary International and a commendation as one of its 20 notable projects. While the program hoped to reach 50 schools by its third phase of funding, it has already reached 54 during its second!
Hands Across Waters is now seeking funding for a School Twinning Program, which would pair up schools around the world to raise awareness about water conservation. Each school would research the status of water supply and sanitation in their part of the world, then share their findings with each other and learn about technologies being used to save water worldwide, many of which were developed in Israel.
Sussman says he hopes to see the students who participate in this project continuing on to college, including at places like Ben Gurion University in central Israel and the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology in Haifa. On a larger scale, he hopes this project can be a model for other countries experiencing ethnic violence. “This is a special program that’s having great significance in Israel and could have greater significance in the Middle East and worldwide.”