Dalia Association, Palestine
With GFCF grant funding, over 2025 / 2026 the Dalia Association will strengthen its food sovereignty programme as a form of resistance and self-reliance in sustainable food production, leveraging ancestral local knowledge and wisdom to combat climate change and promote agroecology practices, water collection and retention, and composting. As part of the Giving for Change programme, Dalia created a Community of Practice which comprises over 80 farmers and cooperatives in Gaza and the West Bank. With this grant, Dalia will continue to convene that group and to expand it.
Specific activities will include small grants to grassroots organizations to support community-led initiatives. Grants will be selected through a participatory, community-led grantmaking process. Dalia will also conduct workshops in farming communities on topics such as community philanthropy, measuring impact in communities, local leadership, etc. and will organize annual community-wide sessions aimed at raising awareness around community philanthropy and resilience in the face of climate change. For Dalia, this work is political, as it is about reasserting control over daily life and decisions, while also breaking from dependence on external support.
Since 2007, the GFCF has made 15 grants to Dalia, totaling US $240,000. For more information on Dalia’s work around food sovereignty, see the short film Untold Revolution. Or read the remarks of Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia’s Director, on how traditions of solidarity can rebuild community agency eroded through aid dependency.