Tala and Farah Mousa have won The Earth Prize from The Earth Foundation, a Geneva non-profit who has been giving prizes to people age 13 to 19. Not only have the young sisters created Build Hope, Palestine, by finding a way to make bricks out of the rubble around them, in doing so, their work has, in the foundation’s founder’s words, empowered others. Without machinery or special equipment, they have taken the rubble, sifted it, mixed it with clay, ash or glass powder, shaped it into bricks and let them dry. The results are non-weight bearing blocks, blocks that are reusable in rebuilding many aspects of their communities. The plan is for them to teach 100 young people, who would then teach others so that the numbers of people able to make bricks from ruble would exponentially grow. As it turned out, they had to be relocated and could not take their prototypes with them. But the method they have created stays and can now be shared with others.
Tala and Farah are also inspiring people like me—and hopefully whomever reads about them— to see not only what hope and resilience and strength really are, but also how human beings live up to the symbol of the phoenix rising from the ashes.
*reposted from GGID page
Leave a Reply