International Outreach Program

Need: Since its establishment, Merchavim has understood the importance of encouraging better informed, more sophisticated, critical but empathetic engagement with the complex society-building challenges facing Israel by key international stake-holders. It has already begun doing so through targeted activities. Now, we are seeking to develop the capacity to market and deliver a comprehensive range of educational programming on a regular basis.

Merchavim's international outreach program will meet several pressing needs:

• Strengthening the interest of influential audiences abroad, within Jewish communities, with international opinion-leaders and inter-faith groups, in engagement with Israel and Israeli society by highlighting how such engagement can be compatible and even promote progressive values of openness and diversity.
• Increasing the legitimacy of society-building efforts in Israel and boosting the empathy of key stakeholders towards such efforts.
• Encouraging tendencies, within Israeli society, of openness and engagement with democratic societies abroad, and connecting Israelis and outside stakeholders in a joint effort to promote a fairer Israel.

Goals: Sophisticated, critical but constructive engagement by all these communities with the unique and complex society-building challenges facing Israel, to increase empathy and understanding of these challenges, and to encourage the active involvement of important international partners, working in close cooperation with like-minded Israelis, in addressing the challenges.

Impact: Over the course of 2011 we have steadily increased our International Program activities as a result of demand and in order to provide a growing-range of educational programming to international stake-holders, aiming to expand understanding of and engagement with the shared citizenship challenges facing Israeli society. Since the launch, over 500 individuals from English-speaking countries have participated in shared citizenship programming in Israel.

Merchavim currently offers a range of English-language programming (listed below) in Israel to a range of groups including: university students, professionals, families, lay-leadership, opinion-leaders, inter-faith groups etc. Programs run in duration from a single lecture or workshop to several days of intensive activity. Programming options also exist outside Israel.

Programming has so far included:

• Single lectures on shared citizenship
• A range of half-day and full-day interactive workshops, including study-tours in diverse communities, encounters with Israeli contemporaries, site-visits including schools, museums etc...
• Encounter programs – bringing together English-speaking Jewish young adults from abroad with Arab-Palestinian-Israeli young adults for one-on-one discourse on identity, access and fairness
• Family Immersion Program (2+ days)
• Group Immersion Program (2+ days)

Momentum for these activities in 2011 came from considerable interest in our work from various sources and resulted in the development of the first curriculum product of the program, the "Shared Citizenship Family Pack" developed to engage and educate English-speaking Jewish families on the topic of shared citizenship while they are touring Israel. The development process culminated in the pilot of the pack in February 2011 over 3 days with a family of five (three generations) on a Bar-Mitzvah trip and received very positive feedback.

One family member said: "We each felt like we learned things about Israel and each other that we did not know before and made little connections between things we had heard before but never really contemplated fully. Whether on the left or the right as far as our politics go we each learned something about other perspectives in Israel and their legitimate and deeply felt realities. My daughter said she learned more about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in those three days then she had learned with her school in two weeks of travel though Israel. All in all a very satisfying and enriching addition to our trip to Israel".   

The pack is undergoing final revisions and will be ready by the end of November 2011.

We are currently developing the 2012 work plan for the program.  

Selected Pictures of Activities

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