Social Action in Action

Photos: Linda and Inbar at train station; Linda, Lew and Eitan at youth center; Eitan, Lew and Inbar eating lunch at youth center; Tal holding "Sesame Sandwich"; Yoki with Linda and Lew at Source Vagabond Systems



Through Lew’s contacts from Sheatufim and United Jewish Communities (the Federation) we’ve had some wonderful opportunities to visit with folks who are engaged in innovative and important social activism. This was the case last week when we visited the Tirat Carmel Community Foundation and toured a few of their associated projects.

Our day in Tirat Carmel, a city of 20,000 close to the seaside high tech enclave at Hof haCarmel near Haifa, began when Inbar Hurvitz picked us up at the train station. Inbar replaced Lew’s colleague Atar as director of the Tirat Carmel community foundation when Atar left to join Sheatufim. The first thing we learned was that Inbar and I share an alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. She spent nine years in Berkeley while her husband earned a Ph.D. in Chinese history. In addition to giving birth to two children, she completed her second master’s degree in public policy during this time. I, of course, received my B.A. in sociology from Berkeley quite a few years earlier. Berkeley women rule!

Inbar brought us to the Community Foundation office, housed in a small converted apartment in a poor neighborhood in order to create a close link with the local residents. The town initially served as a transit camp, beginning in 1949 after the Arab population left. With growth over the last few decades, 20% of the city’s current residents are new immigrants, most from former Soviet Union countries and the Caucasus, as well as a smaller group from Ethiopia; 40% of the city’s residents receive welfare assistance.
In 2002 residents, activists and local business leaders came together through the initiative of a veteran welfare official (a woman with 15 years of experience in the community) to form a partnership to create avenues for social change in the city. The foundation doesn’t provide direct services but rather facilitates cross-sector collaboration among the partners—municipal and national officials, local citizens’ groups and community-based organizations, nonprofits and the business sector—and finds resources to support projects. This uniquely successful model of community-based action has spawned several creative programs; we visited two of these and met the energized and visionary people who created and sustain them.

At The Center for Development of Human Capital, the motivated staff, led by dynamo director, Tsilili, offers counseling, internships, social networking and educational and vocational opportunities to young adults (18-40) who haven’t found a place in the schools, military or workforce or who need retraining in the face of job loss. One of their particularly successful programs serves a selected group of dropouts or rejects from military and national service, providing them with the extensive support and training they need to complete or advance their studies; opportunities to perform community service; and the means to acquire the personal motivation and connections that underpin productive lives.

Similar encouragement and training is given to at-risk high school age youth at the community youth center, as we learned from the director, Eitan, a Tirat Carmel native. In the morning school dropouts come to the center-- housed in the slowly-being-renovated buildings of a former vocational campus made available by the municipality--for tutoring, social activities and to learn vocational skills in the hair salon, bicycle shop and ceramics/art studio. One really creative program is the “Sesame Sandwiches” business, overseen by the very enthusiastic coordinator, Tal, who left his family’s catering and food business to pursue a master’s degree and then took this job using his business skills to help empower youth. Every morning at 5:30 a.m. he supervises a group of youth who make and deliver delicious and healthy sandwiches to vending outlets in nearby high tech offices. The kids “run” the business and learn what it takes to be successful. The afternoon and evenings bring kids who are still in school to the center for recreational and social programs (including a new disco area set up in the lunch room). The goal of both the Human Capital Center and the Youth Center is to encourage integration of at-risk populations with the mainstream.

Other community-based efforts in Tirat Carmel include a second store started by a group of women that sells donated items at low cost and raises quite a bit of money for community projects; a women’s theater group for new immigrants; a community garden; partnerships of local businesses with particular schools, childcare and neighborhoods; and a group of young parents who have been working to introduce a progressive, pluralistic curriculum into a local elementary school (which would encourage “strong” educated young families to remain in the town).

Perhaps our most interesting conversation took place at the factory office of Yoki Gill, founder of Source Vagabond Systems, a company that produces high quality, innovative adventure gear including the iconic Israeli sandal (more popular here than competitor Teva) and water bladders. Yoki, a lean pony-tailed man in his 50’s, started the company with his wife out of their two-room Tel Aviv apartment after they returned from a 2-year period of post-army world travel (a very popular Israeli activity). An articulate and visionary guy, he sees travel as a means to learn about others, confront nature and face oneself. His gear is meant to give those who travel with their homes on their backs the comfort they need to face these challenges. But, as he explained, after a while he began to realize that the workers who made the equipment are spending the majority of their waking hours engaged in work. He wanted to acknowledge and support their full humanity, incorporating values of self-development, dignity and cooperation into the workplace. So he added a 5% profit-sharing clause to the company’s bylaws and encouraged the very diverse group of workers (Arabs, Jews from many backgrounds, deaf employees, etc.) to develop all kinds of social, creative, healthy programs/activities to enhance their work lives. The next step for him was to understand that the factory and the workers are part of a community. So, he became very active in making social change to improve the lives of everyone in Tirat Carmel, serving as the chair of the Community Foundation board. His mission is to bring love as a primary value into work and into all aspects of community life. Speaking with Israeli directness, a style he feels often comes from a place of “I”, he expressed a desire to teach Israelis to love others as they love themselves. It is his view that tzeddakah should be mandatory, not just based on personal whim. He believes that business principles—results-oriented, resource-maximizing-- can be turned to the social good. Yoki echoed themes we heard from the other people we met in Tirat Carmel: we have learned to listen to each other, bringing people from all sectors together at roundtables to generate creative solutions to community problems; we take a holistic, long-term approach and don’t just apply bandaids; we love living and working in this community. Tirat Carmel, poised to expand as new housing developments are built, has become a model for progressive social planning through the efforts of the Community Foundation and the amazing people we met.

As we left Tirat Carmel with our gift package of Sesame Sandwiches and bottles of olive oil from the community harvest of the town’s bounteous and beautiful olive trees (which Yoki dreams to develop as a social enterprise business), we felt very hopeful for the future of this place. Yet we also learned from Yoki that Mountain Equipment Co-op, his major Canadian customer, recently faced a challenge from some shareholders opposed to doing business with his Israeli company. Although this effort was defeated, he told us that some European companies are discussing whether to demand that made in Israel labels be removed from products. This seems to me to be a very misdirected and counterproductive strategy, especially when one knows the progressive values that motivate Yoki and his company.