YES Alumni Commemorate Land Dayl

(left to right) Diana Alzeer, Safaa Halahla, and Haneen Nasser work together to plant a tree in Altireh, Ramallah

Land Day, March 30, provided West Bank alumni with the prefect opportunity to implement a long-anticipated tree planting project that they hoped would benefit their community and the environment. "We wanted to improve Ramallah with a better, greener look," explained Diana Alzeer '05.

The Land Day tree planting project turned out to do just that, and the success of the venture left a lasting, positive influence on the community and the participants themselves.

Three YES alumnae, Diana, Haneen Nasser '05, and Safaa Halahla '03, joined '07 YES students Mohammed Hithnawi, Mays Rantisi, Nizar Sharkas, and Ahmad Yassine along with volunteers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and thirty students from the English Access Microscholarship Program to carry out the project.

left to right (top) Mays Rantisi, Safaa Halahla, Haneen Nasser, Diana Alzeer, and Ahmad Yassine (bottom) Nizar Sharkas and Mohammed Hithnawi

Alumni and Microscholarship students approached the Ramallah municipality with the proposal and the municipality not only approved the project but also agreed to donate twenty trees. Coordination of materials and volunteers was required and the YES alumni took the lead in organizing the logistics of the event. "We used |our leadership and communication skills to actually prepare for the event with the other volunteers that helped us," noted Diana. "We also supervised them during the activity to organize and help the groups know their job for the day and finish it successfully!" Students planted the trees along the sidewalk of the Altireh neighborhood of Ramallah. The project was labor-intensive but rewarding—at the end of the day Altireh had twenty new trees lining its streets.

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