ICAN - International Community Action Network

These sisters outside Nablus do not know how old they are. Living in a cave-like home, the Nablus mobile centre housing program fixed their roof. Through CSC some 600 homes are now livable in low-income communities.
Queen Rania of Jordan tours an Amman centre. L to R: Subhi Ejjeh, Dalia Zatara, Ruweida Shakhshir, Queen Rania, Qais Tarawneh, David Leduc, Centre Director Talal Qdah, and Canadian Ambassador Margaret Huber.
Celebrating Hanukah at a Community Advocacy Food Co-op, one of several such co-ops across Israel with more than 1000 member families in low-income neighbourhoods.
Volunteers and staff in the Lod Centre in Israel meet with clients during storefront hours.
More than 50 civil society leaders from the Middle East have trained as MMEP fellows at McGill. Pictured here with staff are our 2009 MSW graduates.
Graduates of a literacy program offered by one of the Amman Community Development Centres in Jordan, show off their certificates.
An Najah Centre Director Bilal Salameh (second from left) leads a tour with CIDA officials of dilapidated homes being renovated in Nablus' Old City through the Centre's innovative housing rehabilitation program.
In the Shuafat Refugee Camp, students learn about the rights and duties of citizenship and the democratic process, though an initiative of an MMEP centre, with the cooperation of the Shuafat Organizations Union (2008).
Saher, a former client who became a volunteer at a Centre in Jordan, takes time out from teaching a computer class to pose with her daughter, Reham.
At An-Najah's Center advises a client in the storefront, a staple of Rights-Based Community Practice,helping people find solutions to their problems, face to face.
A Centre in Jordan has many innovative programs for women, including computer literacy to help them enter the modern workforce.

The International Community Action Network (ICAN), formerly the McGill Middle East Program (MMEP), is committed to the belief that social justice is the most reliable foundation for strong, healthy societies.

Since 1997, joining with partners in each of Palestine, Jordan and Israel, ICAN has worked to establish eleven rights-based community practice (RBCP) centres in some of the most disadvantaged areas of these societies. Despite the increasing violence and uncertainty in the Middle East over the last decade, the centres have implemented programs that engage, educate and empower the citizens most affected by conflict, war, economic hardship and uncertainty.

Over 120,000 people benefit from the work of our centres each year, allowing them access to the basic social, economic and human rights to which we are all entitled.

More than 50 alumni have trained in community organizing as part of ICAN's International MSW Fellowship. These Fellows continue to work at these centres and across the Middle East to advance social justice.

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We have proudly trained graduate fellows from all three countries together in Montreal, preparing them to work within and between communities to solve common problems. We have also been strengthened by the common vision of all our partners that all people share the same rights. Our ability, when the political situation permits, to implement projects across borders for mutual benefit has stood as a testament to the power of relationships. Our ability to adapt to changing conditions is one of the great strengths of our program. Before peace can come between communities it must be deeply rooted within communities. As such, today we at McGill are working to strengthen ICAN at the national and local level within all three countries and hope to promote cross-border alliances again when circumstances permit.

ICAN/MMEP receives funding from: