FOEME - Friends of the Earth Middle East (EcoPeace) (Jordan)

Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is a unique organization that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists. Our primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect our shared environmental heritage. In so doing, we seek to advance both sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in our region. FoEME has offices in Amman, Bethlehem, and Tel-Aviv. FoEME is a member of Friends of the Earth International, the largest grassroots environmental organization in the world. FoEME is a project oriented NGO, using both a “top-down” (advocacy) approach coupled with a “bottom-up” (grass roots / community) strategy that has proven to be a very effective work model. We approach cross border environment and peacebuilding issues by first developing a regional strategy. We hire local researchers - Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli - to gain a regional understanding as to the root cause of the problem and then develop a common vision as to how we might be able to influence decision makers, the media and the general public. A key to our success has been that once the common vision has been developed, our staff from our respective offices take the same vision and present it to their respective audiences; Palestinian to Palestinian, Jordanian to Jordanian and Israeli to Israeli.