Al-Yater: Association for Promoting Cultural and Social Development (Acre)

BACKGROUND
Acre is a mixed city of 45,000, about one-third of whose residents are Arab citizens who suffer discrimination in the lack of municipal resources for developing residential neighborhoods, education, and culture. Al-Yater was founded in 1996 by Arab university graduates to tackle these problems. Shatil's mixed-cities project is to wind up at the end of 2007, when al-Yater is expected to take over the project.

STRATEGIES
Advocacy; consciousness-raising about civil rights; cultural activities.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The Attorneys' Forum (12 lawyers working pro bono) has won a suit against the Acre Municipality, the Ministry of Education, and others, to provide hot lunches for Arabschoolchildren. The forum won a second suit against the municipality and the Shuvu Association, calling for annulment of the latter's lease on an Arab school in Jaffa. A third suit has been filed jointly with Adallah against the Ministry and the Municipality, demanding they repair safety deficiencies at the Manara School.
• The forum provided legal advice to the parents of elementary and secondary schoolchildren in Ma'alot-Tarshiha about the school lunch program and improving the educational system.
• Some 120 11th and 12th graders attended a pre-university orientation that included lectures and informational material on college curricula.
• Two field trips were conducted, one to unrecognized Arab villages in the Negev and the other to Jerusalem along the route of the Security Fence; an evening of poetry, music, and dance was held to mark the 30th Land Day.