Mohammed Abu Amerah

Mohammed Abu Amerah is recreating the tightly knit social fabric of the Arab society, torn apart by rapid urban expansion and the consequent shift in focus from the community to self-interests. He is reviving the traditional and cultural concept of the old harra (neighborhood) and what it represents as a space for community participation, mutual respect, and protection for vulnerable groups. Mohammed is recreating the social and economic fabric of the harra by fostering interdependence in the community to solve the problems which have arisen because of modernization, namely anonymity, neglect of public spaces, and lack of safety nets.

Mohammed is promoting a sense of community ownership, which increases both the residents’ sense of belonging and responsibility; his motto for the initiative, “Our Harra, Our City, Our Country.” Through communal physical rehabilitation projects, the inhabitants of the neighborhood start developing a sense of belonging defined by common space, and through collaboration in those projects social networks are created and new bonds are cultivated superceding ethnic and tribal allegiances. To improve the livelihood of the Harra, Mohammed organizes capacity-building and educational programs where neighbors exchange skills and resources, and form consumer and trade cooperatives which leverage the collective purchasing power of the neighborhood.

The Harra Initiative, which Mohammed founded in 2005, is currently in its pilot stage in the Jabal al-Joffeh region of Amman, Jordan. Mohammed’s Harra is a unique initiative in the Levant region, and has wide-spread relevance in the Arab World. Mohammed envisions Harra as a communal development model for developing countries, particularly when community erosion is the result of unplanned, rapid urban expansion, re-establishing a balance between urbanization, environmental health, communal well-being, and neighborly cooperation.

Mohammed is currently planting the seeds for more harras by identifying and training change agents; natural leaders who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Following this step, he will expand throughout Amman, then Jordan, and then into other Arab countries. While others are working in the field of community development, none involve the community in the development process to the same extent. In addition, unlike some other organizations, Harra started entirely as a grassroots effort, independent from the government and without the need of funding. It is the only initiative to work on building a social infrastructure by strengthening communal ties, and build more independent, self-reliant communities, committed to their own social development.

Amman’s explosive growth over the last 5 decades has caused the degeneration of harra and the support network that came with it. This growth is also largely due to unnatural causes. Jordan is one of the countries most affected by the Palestinian refugee problem: Over 60 percent of its population is of Palestinian origin. As a result, a class system has developed, encouraging discrimination and contributing to the degradation of community. As long as there is no reason for interaction, no communal goals, and no common social fabric people become strangers; conflicts arise between strangers and escalate, as third parties have no interest in mediating. Mohammed was catalyzed into action by the shooting of his neighbor over a parking space.

In contrast, there used to be a collective moral spirit within communities. Families would interact and help each other through difficult times. Traditionally, the Sheikh El Hara (in urban districts) would be the informal litigation authority in resolving local conflicts. Even though the position of “sheikh” was an informal one, the verdicts they handed out were respected because they were widely respected within the community. This informal role has disappeared as elected mayors have gradually transitioned into being government employees, a shift that resulted in the loss of credibility and a severance of social ties with the informal system of arbitration. The loss of informal litigation authorities combined with the anonymity of urbanization has left a void that needs to be filled as people have been left with limited means for conflict resolution.

Today, neighbors in Arab cities barely interact. Seclusion and exclusion has become the norm for many families and individuals. Suspicion and intolerance has replaced inter-reliance, friendship, and understanding. The absence of communal ties means the absence of communal responsibilities. The result is a crumbling infrastructure and growing heaps of refuse. What the government fails to fix remains broken, as hardly anyone takes the initiative to care for land outside strict property lines.

People became strangers because of the weak social fabric, which borders on anonymity. For example, in these modern times, if a widow is evicted because she could not pay rent due to the cost of the funeral, her neighbors would barely notice that she had left the building. In the days of stronger communities, neighbors would cook for her and share funeral costs, until she was able to recover from her grief and find a way to make ends meet.

There are a few other organizations in the Levant that specialize in community development. However, none are committed as strongly to grassroots communal development, development for the community, by the community.

In 2005 Mohammed moved back to Amman, to the neighborhood where his family lived in East Amman, an area that didn’t get enough attention from the government. He felt that residents were estranged from one another, and frequently witnessed violence in the streets, including a shooting over a parking space. Mohammed decided to restore the harra to how it was before. He sold his house and left his job at the Municipality of Amman to start change at a grassroots level. After five years in development, the Harra Initiative has laid the foundation for a strong, healthy community; the current Harra serves 85 families, about 500 people. It started with urban rehabilitation projects in the pilot. These involved defining and renewing the physical environment of the community, including removal of rubble and garbage, building and painting fences, repairing non-structural building problems, planting trees and gardens, using recycled graywater for watering plants, clearly sign-posting streets, and numbering houses. This has increased the residents’ physical identity with the harra and sense of belonging; their social identity has become that of an interconnected group with common goals and shared responsibilities, instead of individual families or ethno-religious sects. Cologne University undertook a study to measure the effectiveness of Harra’s physical environment rehabilitation project on society’s well-being by interviewing community members. It concluded that the impact of the project was very effective, as individuals reported higher levels of trust, cooperation, and interaction with their neighbors. In addition, Al-Jazeera reported on the initial stages of the Harra, calling the project a model of community empowerment.

In five years, Mohammed will expand the project to 20 harras in Amman, all composed of no more than 100 families, small enough to create strong bonds, sense of belonging, ownership, and participation. In the near term, Mohammed’s goals are increased eco-awareness among 350 families, participation in specific communal development projects by 700 families, participation in the rehabilitation of the physical environment by 5,000 families, basic English education, Internet connections, and housing improvements, including upgraded electricity, and central heating.

The social benefit of these projects is the most important aspect. The cooperation required to make these projects successful brings the community together. These projects are especially important to fostering a tighter community for the next generation: Children watch their parents’ participation and will emulate them. These cross-factional interactions spread to daily life. The neighbor next door who you first met while repainting the wall across the street becomes the woman who teaches your daughter to sew, not the Palestinian, for example. In this way, she becomes more than a neighbor; she becomes something closer to family. Multiply these relationships by the number of people who participate in Harra and the positive impact on the community as a whole is clear. The development of these relationships, simple as they may seem, increases community inter-reliance.

In the pilot community, Harra is also starting educational centers for the community’s children within a designated house, offering language courses and IT training. It will also establish a women’s committee to address issues of children, family, and health, as well as a committee for helping those in need (the poor, widows, and emergency health situations). Those in need will go before the committee, present their situation, after which the committee decides whether the community is able to help. Additionally, Harra organizes community events, such as sports activities and celebrations of children’s academic achievements, to encourage healthy and rewarding lifestyles.

Finally, participation in the Harra Initiative includes economic benefits. Mohammed has developed a model for community and trade cooperatives, in which members pool resources to save costs on everything from groceries (i.e. tomatoes, potatoes, and chicken), to Internet service, to raw materials for businesses and tradesmen, at wholesale prices. This is yet another level on which community members will bond. These common funds will be accessible by majority approval in the case of a personal or family emergency, such as medical expenses, help paying for a wedding or funeral, or emergency car repair.

Mohammed and Harra have encountered many obstacles along the way, including selecting the initial Harra, convincing people to participate, motivating people to continue working on their projects, and making the community leadership, usually affluent and influential people, understand the needs of the most destitute in the community and work toward addressing those needs. However, as the Harra pilot enters maturity, Mohammed is confident that the lessons he has learned from the project will serve him well in his replication and expansion efforts.

As he expands into other neighborhoods, Mohammed reaches out to natural leaders and has them, in turn, enlist the wider community’s participation in the project, emphasizing full communal participation as a goal. Once participation has reached the crucial level, Mohammed and the community leaders form “community-based management teams,” composed of 7 men, 5 women, and 10 children from each neighborhood. The teams then design development projects to address their needs and ameliorate problems, with some guidance from the leaders if needed.

After 10 harras have been established, they will join together as a district, with a districtwide democratically elected council. Once this network is firmly in place, Mohammed will establish an intra-communal conflict mediation program, with natural community leaders proposing even-handed solutions to community members’ disputes, instead of expensive lawyers and unsympathetic judges. These leaders will be chosen by the community, in a democratic way.

Each harra costs US$50,000 and is financed 20 percent by in-kind contribution from the community, 40 percent through donor funds, and 40 percent through the business sector. In ten years, with enough funding, Mohammed envisions the completion of 3,000 harra throughout all of Jordan. There is also potential for export of the model to other areas that have experienced rapid community degeneration, such as slum areas of Cairo, where community relocation following the 1992 earthquake destroyed the existing social fabric, and in Moroccan immigrant communities in France and Spain.

Mohammed’s interest in community development stems initially from the example and influence of his parents, who were both active as community advisors, mediators, and philanthropists. Mohammed began his studies in Amman in a private school in a pleasant harra. He was one of the best students in his class, would defend weak students against the tyrants, and was particularly fond of public speaking. Then, in his fourth year his family moved to a more urban area in East Amman, and he transferred to a public school. The first day, he remembers being shocked by the disparities between the abilities of his former and current classmates and being slapped by his new English teacher, for no apparent reason. He became quite unhappy, his grades dropped, and his level of class participation and general interest in voicing his opinion fell off sharply.

After completing his B.Sc. in mathematical statistics from Yarmouk University, Mohammed trained as a trade advisor and enterprise management development consultant; he held a number of positions as an independent consultant and in consultancy firms early in his career.

Mohammed then served as an advisor to the Mayor of Amman for development projects, sitting on the Greater Amman Municipality board. His main duties were to initiate and plan development programs, draft policies, and supervise the execution of these programs. Over time, Mohammed found that most development initiatives targeting infrastructure projects were directed to subcontractors who sucked the money out of the project and diluted the original intent. He saw little qualitative impact and no increase in people’s income, a result which only served to increase their sense of isolation and frustration with the government. In these communities, the physical environment suffers from the frustrations of the residents. When people have no sense of ownership of public property, they either willfully break things or allow things to deteriorate, as the only way they have of expressing their anger with the government.

Mohammed has been proactively involved in public and private community-related projects and activities for a long time. He is the founder of the “Be like Jordan & Belong to the Future, from Ramtha Bani to Davos” initiative. He is also CEO of Friends of Environment Society in Jordan. The development of these various initiatives has honed his entrepreneurial and capacity-building skills.

After his extensive efforts in the private sector and government, Mohammed decided to work independently, based on his belief in grassroots development as opposed to top-down solutions. So much so, that he sold his house in an affluent Ammani neighborhood to move back to the humble neighborhood where he grew up to finance the beginnings of Harra. Mohammed also left a comfortable and respected job to ensure that he could devote his full attention to his initiative.