Grassroots International
Home » Who We Are » Partners » Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)

Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)

Woman holding a lamb, Palestine.PARC was established in 1983 and has become a leading non-governmental organization in the fields of rural development, environmental protection and women’s empowerment. They work with more than 160,000 rural and marginalized Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. PARC promotes sustainable development and aims to build greater food security at the household, community and territorial levels.

Supporting Palestinian farmers is crucial as Palestinian agriculture suffers from a lack of open access to markets, scattered land holdings, a perennial shortage of water and land confiscation. These problems are tied to the Palestinians experience of the Israeli occupation—border closures, the Separation Wall, water usurpation, and settlement expansion.

PARC works with women heads of households to use rooftops, backyards and small scraps of land between buildings for gardening and animal husbandry, including the use of water saving technologies. The women are provided with vegetable and fruit seeds and seedlings, as well as with small animals such as rabbits and pigeons.

PARC promotes sustainable development and improves access to food through multiple initiatives like urban home gardens that are today found throughout Gaza and projects such as the Farm-to-Table program linking Palestinian farmers with consumers in Gaza.


  • On Palestinian Land Day, the Catastrophe Continues

    Today is Land Day in Palestine. It’s a day when Palestinians mark with protest the continual expropriation of their land. There is a lot to protest since Palestinians have been losing land for 68 years.  For Palestinians, the year 1948 is the year of the Nakba (or catastrophe) during which 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and land and hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed. 1967 marks the year when the state of Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and Sinai in Egypt. This year is known to Palestinians as the Naksa (or grief). Today, Israel continues with relentless plans to annex the Jordan Valley for illegal settlements.

  • One Year after Assault, the Disaster in Gaza Continues

    One year ago today, the 51-day campaign of bombing, tank fire and all-out destruction by the Israeli military on Gaza finally ended. The 51 days of darkness euphemistically dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” were the third and most deadly round in a series of violent assaults on Gaza.

    It is truly difficult, perhaps impossible to imagine life in Gaza, then and now, for the 1.8 million people who live there. First of all, there is the trauma.

    “This is not about people who were killed, it is about us who were waiting for death every minute,” said Dr. Mona El-Farra to Grassroots International supporter and author Alice Rothschild during her recent visit to Gaza. Dr. El-Farra is the director of the Red Crescent Memorial Hospital that was bombed during the attacks.

View More