COEXISTENCE MODEL

Israeli and Palestinian peace-building NGOs launch joint fundraising drive

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More than a dozen Israeli and Palestinian nonprofit organizations active in various aspects of peace-building will launch a joint online fundraising campaign on Dec. 29, working with the belief that an already saturated yet neglected field will benefit from shared efforts across the board, Ruth Marks Eglash reports. 

Rising tension: The rare initiative comes amid rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians following a spate of recent stabbing and shooting attacks by Palestinians against Israeli civilians and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. The Israeli army is currently on high alert after the killing of Yehuda Dimentman, 25, in a shooting on Thursday night.

Building peace: The campaign was initiated by Amal-Tikva, a Jerusalem-based organization that provides strategic consulting and training for nonprofits to improve effectiveness, together with B8 of Hope, which supports Israeli and Palestinian grassroots peace-building initiatives. It will unite some 14 Israeli and Palestinian NGOs for focused online fundraising and is being billed as an opportunity where “people from all over the world will join together to support organizations building a more peaceful reality for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Learning together: “Even if the organizations do not raise as much as they hope to, they will learn how to engage their own communities more effectively and how to manage a project more professionally,” Meredith Rothbart, co-founder and CEO of Amal-Tikva told JI. “One of our main goals is to move from a culture of fragmentation and competition to one where peace-building organizations turn to each other for support.” Rothbart said that throughout the preparation process for the campaign, the organizations learned from one another and received support from Causematch about how to put together a fundraising campaign. She also said that many of the organizations are so small that they do not have dedicated fundraising staff.

Read the full story here.

THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Are NFTs the answer to Jewish woes?

BZL-NFT Conference, Dec. 2021. WAGMI, which means “we are all going to make it,” is commonly used by the NFT community. Credit: Rebecca Dinar.

“In 1998 I traveled with my family to Hangzhou, a 7,000-year-old center of art located in the northeast of mainland China. My mother, an artist herself, walked away from the visit with a traditional painting of the region’s misty mountains, which included the chomps (or signatures) of the picture’s past owners. These red marks, which float in the black and white inked sky, increase the art’s value,” writes former Jewish professional Rebecca Dinar, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

NFTs and the virtual world: “I was reminded of the trip and this ancient practice while attending a conference on NFTs – a kind of cryptocurrency. Weirdly, this new trend reminded me of the ancient painting. NFTs, or ‘non-fungible tokens,’ are part of the metaverse – the virtual world. Often represented by art, each NFT is a digital asset defined by its verifiable and authentic ownership. Tracked by a digital underpinning – a blockchain – it’s the ownership (a kind of ledger) that produces value, just like the Chinese chomps on my mom’s painting.”

The Jewish connection: “Before I attended the NFT conference I knew nothing about cryptocurrency, and I was surprised by how much of the discussion was familiar. Investing in something ‘non-fungible’ that aligns with personal beliefs is an idea central to philanthropy. NFTs just allow people to do it virtually, and for a profit… As I sat in the conference, I began to think about ways the Jewish world could use NFTs to solve some of its most vexing problems.”

Read the full piece here.

ACTION STEPS

Becoming better on gender in the workplace in the year ahead

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“As 2021 comes to a close, we as nonprofit leaders find ourselves existing in a kind of liminal space, sandwiched somewhere between the ‘before times’ and aspirational ‘better times.’ The ‘before times’ would be those fictional, yet no less familiar, times in which leaders were trusted because of their knowledge, what they knew to be true,” writes Elana Wien, executive director of SRE Network, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Rabbinic learnings: “The 18th-century Jewish Hasidic leader Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, ‘If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for a tomorrow?’ This is both a fundamentally Jewish and nonprofit leadership principle: that we can become better tomorrow through our actions today.” 

Data points: “But how do we enter the next year after a challenging 2021, with the confidence that we have both the knowledge, and the inspiration, to forge ahead and be better? First, by grounding ourselves in the real, tangible data points that have been collected in the areas of leadership and gender in the workplace that can serve to empower all leaders in creating a healthier and more just workplace and society tomorrow.” 

Things we know: “We know we are still in the midst of the ‘Great Resignation.’ According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 3% of the U.S. workforce resigned in October. The percentage of women either unemployed or looking for work dropped to the lowest level since February, and this is what drove the workforce participation drop that month. Experts guessed that schools reopening in the fall would support a return to the workforce for women. We know from the October jobs report that did not happen.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Brain Drain: Software engineer and entrepreneur Ben Wajdi warns of the dangers of frequent internet use, suggesting that it contributes to a decline in the reading of physical books. “I don’t blame people who read paperbacks and hardcovers instead of PDFs and Epubs anymore. I myself have tried a similar experiment: instead of consuming PDFs, I print them, and actively read them (taking notes while thinking about the material). As a result, I was able to concentrate for longer blocks of time, read more, and grasp more; however, like any first act of rebel against an addiction, I was met with withdrawal symptoms, mainly the urge to open the laptop, and search for something on Google.” [BenWajdi]

Pic of the Day

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Israel Magen Fund co-founders David Rose and Mati Goldstein presented a fully equipped firefighting ATV to volunteers in the Binyamin Security Division, at their Regional Council offices in the West Bank, on Sunday. The ATV, one of four to be donated by the Israel Magen Fund, is the first vehicle of its type to be made available in the region.