We are delighted to be able to announce the winners of our Million-Shekel fund, supported by the Bridge the Divide Campaign.
Read more about our grantees below.
The Haifa Center for Dialogue and Conflict Management
A strategic programme managed by the Welfare Administration of the Haifa municipality and Beit Gefen, together with partners from municipal departments, civil society, and residents. The programme works to process individual experiences of events, provide tools and dialogue skills, and develop local and municipal projects to promote a shared society in the city.
This programme will include a cultural sensitivity training course for professionals who work in municipal agencies, an Arab and Jewish civic leadership group, documentation of narratives of a shared society, and Shared Society dialogue groups for the general public.
Ahoti for Women in Israel and Arous al-Bahar for Women in Jaffa: From the Personal to the Political, from what is Different to what is Shared
A play by Palestinian & Jewish women who live in Jaffa & south Tel Aviv, including bilingual meetings for those working on the play and a printing of the play in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. This will serve as a model for a shared society in communities across Israel.
Bait la-Ruah/Association for Spiritual Guidance
This course will provide tools for dealing with the difficulties of a routine with heightened exposure to suffering and loss, while creating a safe space that permits an open dialogue and intercultural understanding. The project will offer a trailblazing model course for the medical staff of three institutions in northern Israel — a hospital, a senior citizens’ home, and a health fund clinic.
The aim is to create an infrastructure that can be replicated for other personnel in the same institution and subsequently introduced to other similar institutions.
A Mapping for a “Linguistic Landscaping” in Public Recreational Spaces, in cooperation with Sikkuy
This project aims to create a “linguistic landscape,” a pleasing presence of Arabic in recreational places by means of adding expressions and proverbs in Arabic that represent Arab culture in a poetic way, and that stimulate curiosity. By adding specially designed objects with the text in these public spaces, the project aims to create a linguistic space that does not burden but rather enhances the natural environment.
Kulana Yerushalayim
Kulana Yerushalayim is a leading player in the city promoting encounters and meetings between residents of the eastern and western parts of Jerusalem. Their members, Arabs and Jews, work together in diverse ways on behalf of “Jerusalem belongs to all of us” — a more open and egalitarian city for all its residents.
They plan to convene the Kulana Council every month; each session devoted to an important topic (such as personal safety, employment, education, the Temple Mount, exercising one’s rights, and culture) and will bring together activists relevant to the topic, members of the establishment, and members of the Kulana community from both parts of the city.
Breaking the Borders: Bat Yam Municipality
In reaction to the May events, the Education Administration in Bat Yam (just south of Tel Aviv) devised a long-term joint program that relates to the complex issues that arose following the events, offers space for the emotions that surfaced during the fighting in Gaza, and provides educators with tools to conduct a process with their pupils in educational settings.
This is the start of a more extensive program to prepare informal educators to work on emotional and mental preparation; a journey to become familiar with the Arab-Israeli narrative in one of the mixed towns; and finally, the most important stage, joint meetings of educators from Jaffa and Bat Yam, with the focus on getting to know one another, getting to understand the situation as each neighbor sees it, and developing long-term educational partnership.
Jaffa, Yafa, A Mixed City, to Mend the Rift: The Association for the Arabs of Jaffa
A project to revive the Arab-Jewish Committee for Jaffa, confronting the challenges with on-going activities at various levels and for different groups: schoolchildren; Arab and Jewish college and university students; and joint cultural and sports activity.
A Shared Home: Rabbis for Human Rights
Rabbis for Human Rights are bringing together young people aged 18-19 who are attending pre-military academies with their Arab peers doing national service in the Arab sector. The project will work to produce meaningful encounters, stimulate young people’s awareness of the need for a shared society, and educate them for civic activism.
Narratives Navigator, Amram
The production of a first-of-its-kind document bringing together the narratives of different groups in Israeli society about history, identity, issues, and problems in the present, and ideas for solving them.
Ofek: Training Arab Experts about the Middle East and Palestinians: The Forum for Regional Thinking and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
A widespread survey bringing together research published in only Arabic or Hebrew and reworking it for the other language. These will be written by professional bilingual staff, and will help to bring Palestinian Citizens of Israel into scholarly and media discussions on the Middle East and the conflict.
Neighbors / جيران; Lod—That’s Us / نحن اللد: Citizens Building a Community
Lod was the epicenter of the violent disturbances that erupted all over the country. The huge rift in the city is liable to become worse in the future, due to the sweeping urban renewal projects that aggravate the tension and hostility in town. Only joint activity by the communities that live in Lod can lead to the city’s rehabilitation and the emergence of equal coexistence. The project seeks to engrave the events of May 2021 in Lod’s collective memory so that they will not recur and to create a framework for community activity in the shared public space that will leave a mark and express the idea that the city belongs to all its residents.
Joint Residential Program for Jewish and Arab Graduates of Art Institutes: Givat Haviva
The program aims to provide a meaningful transition for artists who are completing their studies in art institutes- which provide a workspace, inspiring peers, guidance by instructors, and a place to exhibit- to the competitive world of art. The program is a new way to augment and create a cadre of young artists who can work in the Israeli art world and influence it to be a multicultural and multidisciplinary space. The young artists will spend three months on the Givat Haviva campus. There will be a selection process to include the most talented, most suitable, and most in need of the program, with representation of minorities within Israeli society. The program will offer the artists a unique framework for Arabs and Jews to understand each other’s society.
Arab-Jewish Center for Social Justice in Ramle: Social Justice Centers/Hashomer Hatsair
Establishing a new Centre for Social Justice, a movement which already includes 5 centers that promote democracy, equality, and solidarity in Israeli society by means of community organising and course for social activists. The center will deal with the burning issues in Arab society today, including crime and violence, education, equal rights, integration and employment, gender equality, infrastructure and housing, local and national democracy, and Israeli Arab identity and culture.
Building Tomorrow in Minecraft: Education Edition. The Academy for Educational Gaming
This online course for Jewish and Arab pupils aged 7-12 from various localities will teach the basics of computer programming through the Minecraft Education Edition. The course will take place in November and December and will coincide with the World Gaming Championship to be held in Eilat; the infrastructure will make it possible to have a full-day experience there.
Jaffa’s Not for Sale—Save Ajami: Kulana Yafa
The Arabs in Jaffa are currently facing an acute threat in the form of eviction notices issued to 460 families. The Emergency Committee, an umbrella organization that represents those Arab families threatened with evictions, has began to impliment a diverse range of tactics to prevent the evictions. This project hopes to mobilize people who are willing to roll up their sleeves in order to make these goals possible.
Joint program for Jewish and Arab school principals: Center for Educational Technology (Matach)
Against the backdrop of the divide between Israel’s educational streams and the alienation between different groups, and in order to promote a tolerant society, Learning Together is an educational model developed by CET that fosters educational partnerships between Hebrew- and Arabic-language schools in the same geographical region. Learning Together aims to improve relations between the groups while preserving their identities by:
• Dealing with racism and prejudice
• Enhancing the educational experience
• Empowering teachers as experts in fields of knowledge and his agents of change
Getting Acquainted to Promote Cooperation and Shared Society: The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, al-Siraj Foundation
A series of activities for young people across ethnicities and genders, including a football tournament for young children, a clean-up project for teens, and cultural encounters for adults.
Developing Bedouin Tourism as a Catalyst for Good Neighborly Relations: Atid Bamidbar
The Good Neighbors network in the Negev was established with the collaboration of Shatil, Atid Bamidbar, and the Mirkam Ezori group in 2018. It currently includes nine organizations and grassroots initiatives and about 30 activists. The network sees the development of Bedouin tourism based on Bedouin-Jewish cooperation, especially in the unrecognized villages, as a path not only for individual and community empowerment and the economic development of these impoverished settlements, but also as a lever for developing tourism throughout the Negev and for preserving Bedouin culture and society and showcasing it to visitors from Israel and later from abroad.
Startup Negev: Eretz Ir
Startup Negev brings together Bedouin and Jewish young people in their 20s and 30s who live in the same region to provide them with the skills and tools to conduct individual and joint projects. Creating a shared space for initiatives by members of the two sectors is the first stage in creating an active social community that encourages solidarity and a shared space for living and action to help the entire region progress. Startup Negev is the first innovation accelerator that promotes technological initiatives among Bedouin and Jews in the area. It assists the entrepreneurs throughout the process, starting with the idea and all the way to producing a finished product that can be marketed to high-tech investors, while creating opportunities for networking and fostering a community based on coexistence and mutual respect.
System Ali
The NGO side of the multilingual band from Jaffa will promote Arab-Jewish workshops to forge a shared sense of creativity between participants. For a decade, the organization has developed creative processes for youth that focus on personal empowerment and self-expression through writing and/or music. Over the course of several meetings, participants in the workshops acquire tools to help them express themselves, confront their emotions, and articulate the change they wish to effect in their communities. These workshops offer participants the opportunity, in some cases for the first time in their lives, to deal with the circumstances and challenges they face. The first stage of the workshop involves homogeneous groups of youth; the second stage brings together youth from different backgrounds. The project’s success will be based on three parameters: 1. Forging ties between groups from different ethnic backgrounds; 2. Meetings of Jewish and Arab youth that deal with more in-depth emotional issues; 3. The workshops resulting in content production.