The food security nonprofit Mazon awarded new “partnership grants” to three Israeli nonprofits as it looks to combat hunger in Israel, focusing on efforts in local government, in the environmental sector and in the non-recognized Bedouin communities in southern Israel.

The three recipients are: Tzedek Centers, a relatively new nonprofit in Israel focused on advocacy in local governments; Life & Environment, an umbrella organization that works with Israel’s environmental and climate change groups; and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the country’s oldest civil rights groups.

“Mazon is committed to ending hunger at a systemic level by tackling the issue at its root, and we are delighted to join with three new partners who are equally dedicated to our mission,” Mia Hubbard, the group’s executive vice president, said in a statement.

Each grant is worth $30,000, which will allow the organizations to expand or deepen their work as it relates to food insecurity, Ishai Menuchin, Mazon’s Israel director, told eJP.

“But it’s not just a gift. They are joining [us],” Menuchin said. “In February, they will be able to request the next grant.”

Menuchin said Mazon selected Tzedek Centers out of an understanding of the importance of work with local governments as many nonprofits increasingly “see that working with the Knesset is less effective.”

Tzedek Centers, which runs courses for municipal officials, is therefore well-suited to introducing the issue of food security to those local governments, Menuchin said. 

“Their plans include developing a dedicated focus group of municipal council members tasked with exploring food security needs, as well as targeted trainings and awareness-raising initiatives,” Mazon said.

Life & Environment naturally overlaps in many ways with the work that food security groups like Mazon are doing as it relates to agricultural practices. “But they’re not tuned in to food security, and they necessarily don’t see the people in the environment,” Menuchin said.

By partnering with Life & Environment — and the 150 groups that it works with — Mazon hopes to insert the issue of food security into its considerations for policy proposals. “They are creating a work group to do so,” he said.

From previous initiatives, Mazon determined that the food security struggles of Bedouin communities in Israel’s Negev desert are both significant and widely underreported as the often unrecognized villages are not surveyed by the Israeli government.

“Studies by the National Insurance Institute show that in the State of Israel, 30.9% of the people in Israel are living in food insecurity,” Menuchin said. “But we have no data on the unrecognized villages in the Negev.”

Mazon has sponsored surveys to investigate the matter. But while these have shown that there is a problem, the full extent is not known. “We added the [association] to raise this issue in the Negev,” Menuchin said.

“The grant will allow ACRI to hire a field worker in the Negev to enhance the organization’s capacity to address poverty and food insecurity through more effective legal action, policy advocacy, public campaigns and collaborative solutions,” Mazon said.