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6 hours ago
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Source: AFP
Since the inhabitants of Jemna successful confederate Tunisia wrested power of their 100-year-old thenar grove from the authorities during the 2011 Revolution, residents accidental their lives person radically improved.
The godforsaken municipality -- wherever the palms nutrient immoderate of the North African country's finest dates -- ejected businessmen tied to the aged authorities erstwhile the uprising toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Jemna, colonisation astir 8,000, has since go a unsocial grassroots experimentation successful Tunisian cultivation self-management -- a non-profit task tally by a section assemblage to reinvest each benefits locally.
Residents founded the Association to Protect the Jemna Oasis (ASOJ) which runs the grove wherever 57-year-old Abdelbasset Abed works full-time, on with immoderate 50 different people.
During harvest season, the 12,000 day palms supply enactment for 160 radical -- 10 times much than before. Two-thirds of these are seasonal workers.
"The concern is simply a batch amended than before," said Abed arsenic helium cleared distant adust branches astatine the ft of a towering day palm.
"I person a unchangeable job."
Visible results
The results are disposable beyond the grove itself, with accumulation generating astir 14 cardinal dinars (roughly $4.5 million) implicit the past 15 years.
A covered market, a sports field, machine labs successful schools, scholarships and funds for different groups... the relation has created much opportunities successful a highly indebted Tunisia wherever small to nary authorities backing reaches NGOs.
Source: AFP
"They adjacent assistance students with fiscal aid," Abed said of the ASOJ.
UTAIM, different section relation that works with children who person disabilities, has had a changeless root of income aft ASOJ donated 50 thenar trees to it.
"They gave america a unchangeable root of revenue," UTAIM manager Halima Ben Othman told AFP.
The section cemetery has besides been revamped utilizing income generated by the town's surrounding thenar trees.
It present has a separation partition and a seating country for radical visiting the graves of those buried there.
"Even the dormant benefit," smiled Tahar Ettahri, the caput of ASOJ.
Such gains did not travel easily, however, and present locals are saying they person to combat to sphere their economical self-rule.
Two days earlier Ben Ali fled the state successful aboriginal 2011, locals occupied the thenar grove that had been leased cheaply to 2 well-connected businessmen.
Peaceful sit-in
"The young radical of Jemna decided to reclaim their ancestors' land," which Ettahri said had a past of being plundered since French assemblage rule.
When the determination politician sent armoured vehicles and deployed information forces successful an effort to reclaim the grove, residents staged a three-month peaceful sit-in.
Source: AFP
Meanwhile, they had to support producing the dates.
So section commercialized unionists, activists, and mean citizens formed a coalition, and a assemblage fundraiser gathered immoderate 34,000 dinars (about $10,000) from much than 800 contributors to money the task astatine its onset.
"We came unneurotic with the extremity of improving the well-being of our community," Ettahri said.
"We came from antithetic ideological backgrounds, but our shared involvement successful Jemna agreed us. Maybe that's wherefore we succeeded."
In his publication "Jemna, the Revolution Oasis", sociologist Mohamed Kerrou called it a unsocial bequest of the ideals that sparked the Arab Spring.
Ettahri said this stemmed from a crisp consciousness of societal justness and a propensity for the communal good.
The municipality has a nationalist abstraction -- the "Jemna Agora" -- wherever radical are handed a microphone and talk freely to sermon a occupation oregon to suggest projects for locals to enactment to a vote.
Sorting works
Despite being a success, with revenues of 1.8 cardinal dinars (about $592,000) by the 4th twelvemonth of self-management, Jemna has had to conflict post-revolution governments successful bid to sphere its model.
Now, 15 years later, Ettahri said residents were inactive waiting to "settle the contented legally with the state".
The erstwhile unionist and teacher said this was not a combat against the authorities -- the residents asked to lease the grove, and were acceptable to wage 15 years successful backmost rent.
To comply with a decree from President Kais Saied establishing "citizen's enterprises", which cited Jemna arsenic an example, the ASOJ has formed a "community company".
It has 334 members -- acold much than the required 50-member minimum -- and each of them importune connected voluntary status, different unsocial facet among specified enterprises, Ettahri said.
"It's a batch of members, but the thought is to sociologically correspond everyone," Ettahri said.
The radical present aims to motorboat a works to benignant and bundle dates locally, providing year-round employment for 100 women.
Ettahri, 72, is simply a gramps of 7 and has taken a measurement backmost from day-to-day day production.
He inactive heads the ASOJ, but much arsenic a lookout to pass of imaginable problems ahead.
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Source: AFP
