Bustan Ngo

About: Bustan: Sustainable Community Action for Land and People is an NGO that works in the Bedouin and Jewish communities of the Negev. Description: The word 'Bustan' refers to a fruit-yielding orchard (Hebrew & Arabic), and the name symbolizes what we seek to accomplish. A bustan is sustainable due to its diversity: one plant is a natural insecticide for another, another acts as a trellis for a vine, another preserves water in its roots and sustains neighboring plants. Conversely, in a monoculture, plants are weak and must be doused with harmful chemicals to protect themselves from parasite and weed invasion. BUSTAN believes that the peoples of this land are intertwined and survive most productively in fellowship with one another. Mission: Combined forces of regional conflict, and the global marketplace have yielded too much construction, and too much destruction of the fragile landscape between Israel's Jewish and Arab inhabitants, and the region's public resources. To address the degradation and systematic appropriation of public resources, our proactive programs aim to raise awareness to the political aspects of 'development', the subsequent disappearance of the rural landscape, and the impact on once self-reliant peoples.