Weekly Report - October 18th to 30th, 2009

It has been two weeks since I have been able to write in the blog. It has been a very busy two weeks:

• I came back from my trip to Portugal on Sunday evening October 18th. If you have not yet seen my report click here: David's Trip to Portugal Report .
• Dr. Clive Lipchin and Dr. Shmuel Brenner also returned from their trip to Kenya. Clive and Shmuel's Trip to Kenya Report. The highlight of their trip was meeting President Obama's Grandmother!
• Together with the Dead Sea Arava Science Center, we hosted a visit from the Jewish Colonization Association, the Foundation that distributes the Baron D'Hirsch fortune. The foundation is considering funding lab equipment for the Arava Institute and the Science Center.
• On Friday, October 23rd, Eco-Paths, the Arava Institute's events department held the first annual "Arava Challenge" Ride. It was a 35 kilometer off road ride from Arad to the Dead Sea. We had 25 participants. People had a great time. Arava Challenge
• On that same Friday, October 23rd, our Jordanian Alumni held their first Alumni event in Jordan on 350 CO2 day. A group of alumi decided to do their own event as an initial step. So they partnered with other organizations in the 350 event that was held as a march on the Rainbow Street in Amman Jordan. 350 Event
• On Monday, October 26th, Israel and Jordan celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Jordanian Israeli Peace Treaty. Judy Bar Lev organized a delegation from the Arava Institue to attend the celebration and gives the following report:The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel and the Truman Institute Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace of Hebrew University sponsored a symposium on Monday October 26th 2009 to celebrate 15 years to the signing of the Peace Treaty between Israel and Jordan.
  Here at the Machon Arava we have a number of colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jordan Section who have assisted us over the years in arranging for our students from Jordan to obtain visas to study and live at Kibbutz Ketura.
  They invited us to send a delegation to the symposium of staff and Jordanian students.
  With the effort of leaving Ketura at 05:30 am and some of our alumni who are now at the Albert Katz school for Desert Studies at Sde Boker we arrived at 9:00am to the Truman Institute on Mount Scopus.
  We were given the red carpet treatment upon arrival and our students had the opportunity to greet Jordan's Ambassador to Israel Ali al-Ayed who spoke later on about his participation in creating the Peace Agreement. Additional speakers were James Cunningham, U.S. ambassador to Israel and Yaakov Rosen, Israel's Ambassador to Jordan.
  We made numerous additional personal connections during the coffee breaks, making the long day very much worth the travelling. The presence in the audience of our delegation from The Arava Institute was mentioned from the podium twice during the morning sessions.
• On Tuesday, October 27th, the Institute held the bimonthly Board of Directors meeting chaired by Dr. Michael Beyth. Board members heard positive reports on student recruitment, the academic program, new research projects and fundraising successes in the US. The Board also approved of the planning process for next year's goals and budgets.
• Wednesday morning, the Research Department held a research department meeting. In addition to hearing about Shmuel and Clive's trip to Kenya, researchers and grant writers updated each other on grant requests, grant approvals and research progress. The institute is currently involved in research on crops for arid lands, biofuel production from agricultural waste, biogas production from animal waste, dust settling research, hydrogen fuel production from solar energy, long term ecological and social research and the Dead Sea Red Sea Feasibility Study. Clive Lipchin, head of the Research Department emphasized the importance of publishing peer reviewed articles for journals. As usual, there was not enough time to talk about everything that is happening in the research department.
• Parrallel to the Research Department meeting, Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, head of the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation hosted Dr. Claude Trink from the French Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning and Ms. Sophie Miller from the French Embassy. France is very interested in bilateral cooperation with Israel on renewable energy. Dr. Trink and Ms. Miller spent a few hours at the Institute and were very impressed with what they saw. We can expect further contact with the Embassy.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report October 11th-16th, 2009

Summer is over and so are the holidays. Time to get back to work and it started this week:

• The big news of course is that on Wednesday night, we opened the Fall Semester 2009 with 45 students! The largest semester in the history of the Institute. 15 Israelis, 12 North Americans, 12 Palestinians, 5 Jordanians and 1 Australian. The group looks great and the Academic Programs Department is completely prepared for a great semester. This week is orientation and next week starts classes.
• We had the third meeting of the Coordination Committee between the Institute and the Kibbutz which tries to promote a positive relationship between Kibbutz members and the Institute.
• In addition to the start of a new semester, the Fall schedule looks quite full and a lot of time was spent this week in meetings preparing for these events. Here is just a sample:
• October 23rd - Arava Challenge - One day off road ride for Israelis
• November 4th-9th - Israel Ride Fall 2009 from Tsfat to Eilat
• November 19th-20th - Food for Thought - Food Conference in Tel Aviv
• November 25th - BGU Agreement Signing Ceremony
• So you can see that it is a pretty full schedule for the next two months.
• Uri Nusinow left this week for a trip to Brussels as a guest of the EU. He managed an environmental project called Life which was funded by the EU and promoted sustainable solutions for waster water treatment in the Arava. Uri is in Brussels at a final conference of the project.
• I am travelling tonight to Portugal, to the EcoVillage Tamera to meet with their leaders about research cooperation between the Arava Institute and Tamera.
• Clive Lipchin and Shmuel Brenner are back from a very successful trip to Kenya. We hope that this trip will spawn a new initiative for a Center for Sustainable Development in Arid Lands.

Have a nice weekend.

David