This document is the central reference for Juthour’s volunteer program. It is written directly to you as a current or prospective volunteer.
This induction pack is intended to offer you honest and open information to reflect on and consider. Your contributions are deeply important, and your presence is valued.
Because of the occupation of Palestine, we need consistency and safety to be reflected in how we engage together. Relationships and trust are built through continuity, shared work, and mutual showing up over time.
If you have any considerations, questions, or concerns as you read this, please reach out to a volunteer coordinator. Contact details will be shared with you directly.
Juthour sits on ancestral land in the hills near Beit Jala, Palestine—a place that has witnessed centuries of cultivation, care, and connection. For generations, this land was tended by hands that knew the rhythm of the seasons, the patience required to coax life from stone and soil, and the deep responsibility of stewardship.
Like much of Palestine, this land also holds fracture: displacement, neglect, and the slow erosion of ecological and cultural memory under occupation.
When the Totah family began returning to Juthour, they were not just reclaiming property—they were rekindling a relationship. They found a landscape scarred by years of abandonment, yet still breathing. Wild grasses pushed through cracked earth. Ancient olive trees, gnarled and patient, waited. The land was calling for care, and the family answered with a vision that reaches beyond personal restoration.
At Juthour, the primary land stewards are the Totah family (Saleh, Morgan, and their children). In this document, when we refer to “the family,” “land stewards,” or “stewards,” we mean this same core family and their shared role in tending the land.
Juthour’s vision is rooted in five interwoven commitments:
Arboretum
To create a living library of native and regionally adapted trees and plants—a sanctuary of biodiversity that honors what has grown here for millennia and what can thrive here into the future.
Nature Preserve and Ecological Education
To protect this land as habitat and as classroom. A place where people can learn directly from the earth: how ecosystems function, how to regenerate soil, and how to live in reciprocity with the more‑than‑human world.