P.O. Box 8016
Nahalal 17, Bat Galim
Haifa 3501549
Israel
- Democracy and community development
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Youth and education
PATHWAYS launched in 2015 as an independent nonprofit organization in Israel to bring negotiation education into educational systems and to build bridges between communities. Our interactive negotiation education programs and workshops, based on methodology developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project, blend experiential learning of creative negotiation skills, inter-communal encounter and exchange, and content-based language immersion. PATHWAYS’s series of Game Changers skill-building and exchange workshops bring together high school students from diverse Arab and Jewish communities in partnership with educators and educational networks. Our professional development workshops for active educators and academic college courses for pre-service teachers are recognized by the Ministry of Education. We have two full-time employees, three part-time, and a team of affiliated workshop facilitators. Our funding (~600,000 NIS last year) has come from grants from the U.S. Embassy, Social Venture Fund, Schocken Foundation, and program fees from school networks and other project partners.
Our mission is to contribute to building problem-solving, cooperative, and shared societies in which people from different backgrounds and communities have the skills and sense of possibility needed to creatively and constructively negotiate challenging issues with one another. We imagine a day when every student, educator, and leader – irrespective of background or social/political outlook – will be equipped to transform their negotiations into joint, creative problem-solving. Our methodology for transforming negotiation from adversarial bargaining/haggling to joint, creative problem-solving is designed to have a radiating ripple effect through the educational system to individuals, schools, and communities.
We aim to create sustainable, institutionalized impact through partnerships with key actors in formal and informal education, including teachers, school systems, and administrators. Our social impact is reaching a tipping point in which enough of our methodology, concepts, and tools have been adopted in the education system that we are seeing systemic shifts beyond our direct programs.
We are achieving this by:
Partnering with professional leadership in the Ministry of Education to deliver MoE-certified professional development courses.
Developing scalable programs with school networks and municipal/regional authorities.
Working with educators to incorporate problem-solving negotiation education into classroom curricula and school cultures.
Creating and activating a diverse national community of practice of educators pioneering the field of negotiation education.
Equipping pre-service teachers at academic colleges to incorporate concepts and model in their future teaching.
Running transformational workshops with a critical mass of high school students.
Students: Our Game Changers workshops for high school students offer an immersive journey into learning interest-based negotiation, foster connections and exchanges with peers from other backgrounds, and develop vital thinking and communication skills. Last academic year we worked with 800 students from 40 schools (20 Hebrew-speaking schools paired with 20-Arabic speaking) in diverse communities across Israel. We offer in-person, virtual, and blended programs, including virtual exchange.
Educators: Our professional development programs (NET Fellowship, Summer Institute), recognized by the Ministry of Education, enable active educators to bring problem-solving negotiation concepts, experiential pedagogy, and practical tools into their classrooms and teaching practices. Our courses for pre-service teachers - conducted in partnership with academic colleges like Achva, David Yellin, Oranim, Sakhnin, and Al Qassemi - equip the next generation of educators.
Schools: We partner with school networks, municipalities, and regional authorities to incorporate problem-solving negotiation education and inter-communal bridge-building and exchange into their educational systems through network-based programs.
Organizations: We work with educational and aligned social impact organizations to develop problem-solving negotiation, communication, and leadership skills with their program participants, staff, and alumni. We offer a variety of skill-building workshops in-person and online.
We would be eager to explore opportunities to cooperate and to develop joint projects with other ALF network members. We could also work with the Network to offer members creative negotiation skills workshops or seminars for their participants and alumni, focusing on problem-solving negotiation, intercultural dialogue & exchange, and leadership.
We believe that we can have the greatest long-term impact by aligning ourselves with and working with other organizations and networks with compatible values and approaches. Anna Lindh Foundation’s mission to build more inclusive, empathetic and resilient societies, and to fight growing mistrust and polarisation, aligns well with our purpose, principles, and approach. We would like to join the ALF network to learn from other network members, find ways to cooperate, develop joint projects, become eligible for grants, and work together to scale and enhance our direct and indirect impact. Thank you for your consideration.