I'm a bit late reporting on this, but it's been a very busy couple of weeks!
On Thursday June 5 the annual Green Globes award ceremony took place at the Noga Theater in Jaffa. It is the key annual public event for the Israeli environmental movement, organized by Life and Environment - the umbrella organization, and grants awards for environmental activity and one "Black Globe" to the main offender of the year.
Heschel's Local Sustainability Center won the award for municipal activity (see film-clip in Hebrew, below). Orli Ronen-Rotem, the center's director and Heschel's deputy director, gave an emotional and impressive acceptance speech. She was joined onstage by representatives of the project's Israeli partners - Tel Aviv University's Porter School for Environmental Studies and the Ministry for the Environment - and of participating municipalities. All of them expressed their appreciation and respect for the work of the center, Orli and its staff.
Eitan Atia, director of the Forum of 15 Self-Governed Cities in Israel was particularly eloquent and effusive in his praise. As a result of the Local Sustainability Center's efforts, the Forum of 15, which represents Israel's largest and strongest cities, signed the Cities for Climate Protection international charter, committing to reduce their carbon and air pollution emissions. The charter is run by another of the project partners, ICLEI - the International Center for Local Sustainability.
In fact, the Forum of 15 and ICLEI have just joined the Heschel Center in submitting a proposal to the EC for a nation-wide project to implement city-based climate reduction. Let's hope it's successful!

The Heschel Center had a strong showing in general at the ceremony: the director Dr Eilon Schwartz gave the opening remarks in his capacity as chair of Life and Environment; Heschel Fellow Yotam Avizohar won the award for environmental activist of the year for his work as director of the Israel Bicycle Association; Heschel Fellow Sigal Yaniv, director of the Green Environment Fund, presented an award; Channel 10 journalist Nitzan Horowitz, another Fellow, broadcast from the event directly to the channel's main news magazine; the event was organized by Heschel Fellow Naor Yerushalmi, Associate Director of Life and Environment; the film-clips in the ceremony were created by Yuval Shor, coordinator of Heschel's Artists for Sustainability Forum.

Here's the film-clip on the Local Sustainability Center prepared for the event (Hebrew):