Israel

• Language as a Cultural Bridge was launched in 2005 with the ultimate goal of mandating bilingual, bicultural education for every child in the Israeli public schools. Already reaching tens of thousands of students in hundreds of schools around the country, the program is based on a unique and engaging Arabic language and culture curriculum taught by Arab teacher-ambassadors in Jewish schools, and contemporary Hebrew language enrichment and cultural workshops in Arab schools. Combined with cultural encounters between neighboring Arab and Jewish children and educators, Language as a Cultural Bridge is breaking down barriers and promoting mutual respect among young Jewish and Arab Israelis. • Policing in a Divided Society is a major national initiative aimed at improving relations between the Israel Police and the Arab community by strengthening police services provided to Arab towns and villages, empowering local Arab leaders to advocate for the needs of their communities, and supporting problem-solving partnerships between local police and Arab leadership. The program equips officers with the skills required to effectively serve a diverse society by providing cultural sensitivity training and by sponsoring international learning seminars to study best practices of multicultural policing around the world. • Promoting Equal and Accessible Services within government agencies, civil society and the business sector aims to address tensions between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens that result not only from lack of understanding, but also from disparities in access to resources and services. Projects have included a Center for Emergency Medicine designed to provide culturally sensitive care to the Arab and Jewish communities of the Central Galilee; planning for Israel’s first bilingual/bicultural college in the Northern Negev; and promoting linguistic and cultural accessibility to government websites serving Israel’s Arab citizens. • Arab Women’s and Youth Leadership Initiatives strengthen the leadership and management capabilities of Arab women and youth by providing an extensive training course and personal guidance for select women and youth geared towards integrating them into leadership roles in the public sphere. Built on the platform of The Abraham Fund’s highly successful job training and placement initiative, this program is changing how Arab women and youth are viewed within their families and by society at large – and how they see themselves. • Public Education and Advocacy exposes policy makers and opinion shapers within government, the media and the private sector to the imperative of constructing a shared and inclusive society, and advocates for policies that promote equal opportunity and access to services and jobs. The Abraham Fund conducts groundbreaking research, monitors legislative developments, and offers our policy proposals, experience and knowledge to decision makers. We advocate on the local and national levels through intensive work with Knesset legislators, government ministers and senior civil servants; through frequent Op-Eds, TV, radio and online features; and through our thriving social network community on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. One of our most important and unique tools is our 800 page, Arab Society Informational Manual which allows decision makers to advance well-informed policy relating to the Arab community while relying on comprehensive, reliable and accessible information.

ACA Programs 2015-2018:

The Arab Cultural Center in Haifa.

Work of Art- Cultural Development Agency

Language and Identity

Youth Empowerment Program

Cultural Distribution
The Arab Cultural Center- Haifa
Belonging, Creativity, Production
The idea of establishing an interdisciplinary Arab cultural center emerged to meet the need of Palestinian Arab society in Israel and the Palestinian cultural movement for an independent professional space that is multifunctional and Arab in identity. The Center aims to: nurture and develop unrealized cultural energies; facilitate the exchange of knowledge and expertise; support artistic, literary and critical capacity building and development; provide an inspiring environment; and encourage cultural production, distribution and artistic initiative. The Center will facilitate communication between cultural and artistic institutions, frameworks, and initiatives in the Arab world as well as internationally.
The Arab Culture Association chose to establish the Center in Haifa because this Arab city has recently become an artistic and cultural urban center for Palestinian society once again. Before electing to establish the Arab Cultural Center in Haifa, the city lacked the necessary infrastructure to continue developing momentum and Arab cultural production across the various disciplines.
The Center will consist of two impressive buildings near the long-established Arab neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas in Haifa’s historic center. The area will begin its restoration beginning in 2015 as part of a plan that includes — in addition to the ACA’s offices — modern and fully equipped exhibition, training and production spaces:

Multi-use performance hall

Arts library and cultural archive

Gallery

Training and professional centers

Cultural café

Arts marketplace

Studios

Various other cultural and artistic facilities

Projects: Green vision and Co-existence on 5 Arab municipalities at the Southern Triangle region – aimed to develop mechanism for public participation on environmental decision making process and develop of resources for sustainable communities; he project is aimed to be expand and includes the regional planning of public sphere with participation of neighboring Jewish-Arab communities.
Climate Justice Research and Economic Policy – examine the socio-economic profile of the CO2 emission to the atmosphere as reflected by the different patterns of consumption pf the economic deciles in Israel and formulate economy policy;
Reducing Environmental Risks in Shared Space – map and edit the different environmental risks for groups of population in shared space

Today, in addition to its work in the spheres of community mobilizing, raising awareness and service development programs to increase protections for women from gender-based violence, the Association now runs two flagship initiatives: a comprehensive program to promote Palestinian women’s participation in the workforce (with an emphasis on women with academic degrees) and a series of campaigns to promote and support women in the public sphere through concentrated work opposite local Arab councils and the political leadership of the country. Our current strategic plan for 2016-17 is attached below.

1. A Mediterranean urban "Playlist": recording a disk which will document and preserve the music played and sung by the diverse communities of the city.
2. A series of meetings ("The Voice of the Community"): getting to know the musical map of the city through the mosaic of communities that sing in it.
3. A City with Roots: the establishment of an innovative database consisting of the application of Bar Mitzva work projects on their roots by students of Grade 7 in the city to an electronic data system in the Municipality.
4. "The Mayor team" - the project will provide a municipal team of young people from all over the city with material to examine and consider the public space of the Mediterranean city, and their recommendations will be passed on to the Mayor.

Among projects and activities the center creates one can find
1) Seminars on employment;
2) A program to help young people without an academic background develop employable skills;
3) Employment / Career Development Fair
4) A young parents leadership forum with seminars on general life-skills, awareness of various municipal leaders, and meetings to plan community projects;
5) Activities to strengthen communal identification;
6) The development of an Arab-Jewish alliance that will engage in various cultural and social welfare endeavors;
7) An ecology program;
8) A club for physically challenged young adults.

CSEPS's activities cover a variety of different areas, such as developing links with European institutions and launching collaborative research projects with European colleagues. CSEPS organises international conferences and workshops bringing European researchers, decision makers, diplomats and political figures to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Main Projects:
• Creating New Constituencies for Peace
• Israeli Grand Strategy towards the EU
• Euro-Mediterranean Young Researchers Network
• European Elections Monitor
• The Ambassadors Forum
• Israeli European Policy Network

The Youth Parliaments of Israel’s Jewish-Arab Mixed Cities - A joint platform of dialogue and change for the Jewish and Arab youth of the mixed cities of Israel. This program was launched in partnership with USAID and currently operates in Jaffa, Akko, Lod and Haifa, with plans to expand to additional locations. In each city, 30 young Jews and Arabs participate in a two-year program, consisting of constructive dialogue between the groups in the first year and capacity-building training and community-based initiatives in the second year. A National Youth Parliament is also being formed, which will consist of delegates from local parliaments. The young people study problems affecting the lives of Jews and Arabs in their local communities, and seek to build a mechanism of dialogue and conflict transformation to deal with those problems in a non-violent way. Dialogue programs – CAF launched in 2013 a major dialogue program in partnership with the European Union, based on the Applied Deliberative Dialogue method developed in conjunction with the Kettering Foundation in the United States. This program brings together citizens from diverse groups (Jews and Arabs, men and women, decision makers, students, secular and ultra-Orthodox) to deliberate jointly over issues at the heart of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. The project works on three levels: Dialogue groups with members of the general public; advocacy work with decision makers and legislators; and training and development of professional skills for facilitators. The participants will acquire the ability to hold an informed discussion on contentious issues, and will make progress towards formulating policy recommendations

The CLE Center runs 10 legal clinics that specialize in the following fields:
1. The International Human Rights Clinics: works to promote and apply international human rights law within Israeli law.
2. The Criminal Justice Clinic: provides legal assistance, free of charge, to individuals involved in all stages of their criminal proceedings — from time of arrest through indictment, trial, appeal and retrial.
3. The Representation of Marginalized Populations Clinic: Community lawyering that provides legal aid, legal consulting and representation, free of charge, to people of the marginalized and social-economic periphery societies of Jerusalem.
4. The Community and Social Economic Clinic: offers legal assistance and guidance to small business owners and entrepreneurs in society’s disadvantaged or marginalized groups
5. The Rights of People with Disability Clinic: aims to promote the integration of people with disabilities into society by advocating policy change, particularly through the implementation of legal rights in employment and education.
6. The Innocence Project - The Wrongful Convictions Clinic: Works to provide more accessible and practical retrial opportunities by assisting convicted individuals in need of legal expertise and access to justice and due process.
7. The Children and Youth Rights Clinic: provides legal aid and knowledge regarding the law and the legal system to Israel’s children and youth through the process of empowerment and legal representation.
8. The Women’s Rights at Work Clinic: promotes and protects the rights of society’s working women in the ethnic/national/religious/socio-economic margins,
9. The Financial Market for Social Outcomes Clinic: assists entrepreneurs and investors in devising innovative models for enabling social enterprises to raise capital in a manner in which entrepreneurs can pursue their social goals
10. The Multiculturalism and Diversity Clinic: students come with various perspectives including future lawyers, psychologists, journalists, sociologists and anthropologists, are coming together to explore the loaded and intriguing intersections among the various cultural groups composing the Israeli mosaic.

In 2015 we will devote a major portion of our work to three main avenues of combating racism:
1. Working with the police to reduce discrimination and police brutality.
2. Lobbying the Knesset Education Committee and the Ministry of Education to invest in human rights and an anti-racism curriculum.
3. Targeting ministries and institutions to reduce institutional discrimination and to encourage them to adhere to already established anti-discrimination laws.
Our work has already taken on two main directions:
1. We worked to liaise with the police and to conduct human rights awareness training programs.
2. We also initiated a campaign to take legal action in response to police misconduct.
This project promotes respect for human rights, such as basic freedoms, freedom of movement, and the rights of detainees, as well as the rule of law. We regard it as a matter of course that the police work to assist minorities and vulnerable communities rather than perpetuating stereotypes and causing additional harm.
This year we will also initiate a large-scale campaign to encourage anti-racism work throughout the education system. We are working with the Knesset Lobby for the War on Racism and Discrimination, lobbying the Ministry of Education to recognize the urgency of the situation and to change the educational curriculum. We expect that the government and governmental institutions themselves will take measures to reduce instances of institutional discrimination and racist incitement.
Thanks to our work, government ministries are beginning to assume responsibility. We are creating a more favorable environment for other institutions and authorities to come forward and to seriously address institutional discrimination in their departments.
We are currently initiating several new programs:
Through Culture against Racism, we conduct cultural events in various localities throughout Israel to bring together Jewish and Arab audiences. After numerous hate crimes were committed in Fureidis, we brought Culture against Racism into the city and held musical events with Arab and Jewish artists. This attracted both Arab and Jewish audiences, and residents of Fureidis got a chance to mingle with one another while learning a bit about each other’s culture and music. More than 600 individuals attended the events. We plan to make this a regular program in the coming year- bringing minority groups together to know and celebrate one another’s culture.
Education for human rights and anti-racism. In this year we are planning to launch a project working with high school teachers in the Western Galilee, particularly in Sheikh Danoun, an Arab village, and at Evron High School. We selected this region because the area in and around Nehariya experiences frictions between the Arab and Jewish residents on a daily basis. In this program we train teachers how to promote tolerance and how to educate against racism in schools. Teachers have a profound effect on their students and can be strong agents of change. By bringing tolerance and antiracism education into these schools, we hope to create safe and diverse environments where students, who otherwise might never interact with a member of the other community, learn about respect, mutual understanding and human rights. In turn, some of these students will have a strong multiplier effect as they go on to army service, higher education, and enter the job market. With a strong background in acceptance and understanding, they will affect their peers’ attitudes and outlooks on Jewish-Arab relations and become agents of wide-scale social change. Our member organization, Psychoactive, will take the lead on this project.
 
Activities with young leaders. With our member organizations Ossim Shalom and the Community Centers Company in the lead, we plan on conducting activities with young leaders and guides, ages 15-18, in the Galilee this coming year. The Galilee region is the home of arious groups from a wide range of ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and races. However, this region is also among the most segregated in Israel. Youths neither have a chance to regularly meet peers from other groups nor get to know one another personally, leading to numerous expressions of racism and prejudice. It is important to target this age group, as they are the ones entering the army, and joining the workforce and institutions of higher education. They will be the ones setting the stage for Israel’s future.