Contracting party: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), (“PCUSA”)
Funded By: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), (“PCUSA”)
Starting Date: December 2023
Ending Date: June 2024


This project aims at implementing home gardens and wicking beds interventions to the benefit of the families relying on the tourism sector as their main source of income in Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala who owns small plot of land with permanent source of water for irrigation for home garden and providing wicking beds for those who haven’t access to land and have access to water resources. The intervention will target 33 families (13 wicking beds and 20 home gardens). The project beneficiaries will be selected in cooperation with Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

This project will follow up a smart and participatory approach and effective implementation time to be sure the planned interventions will be accomplished during a short period of time and to become productive in short amount of time to reduce the cost of food and increase their access to more food for at least a few years. The project will provide each family with inputs that are enough to cultivate home garden with an area of 200-300 m2 per home garden. Each home gardens can be cultivated for 2 seasons (winter and summer) with vegetables, yearly. The expected production for each home garden varies between 240-360 kg/ home garden/year. This amount of production equals to 408-612 USD/year (42.5 USD/ month) based on last year prices while based on the current prices production value ranges from 660-990 USD/year. This forms 8.5% of the monthly income of the targeted families and equals to 14.2% of the family expenditures on food.