The Sea is Free – SHATIL Publishes Environmental Activism Book in Memory of Alona Vardi

To launch the book, The Sea is Free -- on Environmental Justice and Public Participation in Planning, SHATIL organized an environmental happening in Tel Aviv July 31. The collection of essays is published by SHATIL, the NIF, the Green Environment Fund and the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, in memory of Alona Vardi, founder of SHATIL's' environmental justice project. The idea for the book was born when a group of Alona's colleagues from Israel's environmental movement met soon after her premature death last year to think about how to preserve and cherish her memory and to widen the reach of her special message.

From the book's preface: "Alona was given a special gift with her birth - a sense of natural justice. With the years, this sense turned into a compass that guided her life as an environmental activist who worked to promote environmental justice through participatory democratic processes that are alive, active, involving and formative."

Each of the book's contributors - including MK Dov Hanin, Prof. Avner de Shalit, Dr. Eilon Schwartz and leaders of Israelis' environmental movement --held many conversations with Alona and her world view is echoed in their writings.

The happening, held at the Kibbutzim Seminary in Tel Aviv, included eight workshops on a variety of environmental issues, a Hyde Park with 10 speakers and a plenary with a panel on the growth and development of the environmental movement in Israel and remarks on the book by MK Dov Hanin. The event was covered on TV and radio.

The Sea is Free is available in Hebrew from SHATIL for $16 including shipping by contacting hilac@shatil.nif.org.il.

The day provided participants with a chance to brush up on their environmental skills at workshops such as: an analysis of the successful collaborative campaign to eliminate the fish cages in Eilat by Green Course; how to tell if a factory is polluting the environment by the Public Health Coalition, how to prepare compost, an arts workshop for children using recycled materials and more.