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 4th-9th, 2009

Another quiet week at the Arava Institute as we celebrate the week of Shavuot (the fall Jewish holiday celebrating the harvest and remembering our years of wandering in the desert) and gear up for the fall semester which starts next week.

• On Monday and Tuesday this week, the Science Center hosted a "Science Festival" sponsored by the Ministry of Science. The Ministry supports local Research and Development Centers around the country including the Dead Sea Arava Science Center which has a branch located at the Arava Institute. None of us expected to see any visitors stop by the Institute as part of the festival but to our surprise, on the first day a family of five dropped by and on the second day, we had 20 visitors who came to the see the Science Center. Next year, we will try to leverage this into a larger event with more activities and hopefully more visitors.
• Dr. Clive Lipchin, Director of the Arava Institute Research Programs and Dr. Shmuel Brenner, Director of the Arava Air Quality Research Program were invited by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to travel to Kenya and help develop joint academic, scientific and development programs connected to the UN Millennium Villages project. We will get a full report of their trip from Shmuel and Clive when they get back but for now, I want to share the following from Clive:
• Greetings from Kisumu, western Kenya. Today Shmuel and I had a very special treat. We were taken to meet President Obama's grandmother in her village. It was a very emotional meeting. Barak Obama's grandmother lives in a very modest family compound. The only sign of Obama are some election stickers on her front door. She came out to meet us on her lawn and we sat around chatting with her. She does not speak English so one of our Kenyan colleagues translated for us. She is a very modest woman and we felt humbled to be in her presence. In her compound is the grave of Obama's father and his grandfather. Obama last visited his grandmother in 2006 and she last visited the US for his inauguration. According to the visitor's book it seemed we were the first Israelis to visit her. - Clive
• So while our FAI Staff were off in LA cavorting with the stars and while our Research Programs staff were off in Kenya meeting Barak Obama's grandmother, I had a very quite week at the institute - I got a hair cut, went to the dentist, cooked a birthday dinner for my 16 year old daughter and attended a local farmers market at Kibbutz Yahel. Next week, the excitement begins when the students arrive on Wednesday, I take a trip to Portugal to visit the Tamera Eco Village and Uri Nusinow travels to Brussels at the invitation of the EU. More next week

David