NIF/SHATIL William Frankel Social Justice Fellowship - in association with the JC

Application Materials

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New Israel Fund UK is honouring the life of the late William Frankel, his many accomplishments and his steadfast commitment to human rights and social justice, through the establishment of The William Frankel Social Justice Fellowship. This programme seeks to nurture and secure the future generation of social change leaders from outside of Israel, through an internship in Israel. As William Frankel revolutionised The Jewish Chronicle, so could our fellows transform the landscape of their communities - reflecting his dynamic personality and his desire to challenge the status quo.

The NIF/SHATIL William Frankel Social Justice Fellowships enable a cadre of post-university Jewish professionals to spend 10 months immersed in the movement for social change in Israel. These Fellowships, which include a modest stipend, place young Jewish activists in Israeli NGOs for a year of in-depth contribution and learning.

About the Fellowship
NIF/SHATIL William Frankel Social Justice Fellows spend 32 hours per week interning in an approved, individually-selected Israeli non-governmental organisation (NGO), active in one of the following areas:
• Safeguarding civil and human rights
• Pursuing environmental justice
• Promoting Jewish-Arab equality
• Advancing the status of women
• Fostering tolerance and religious pluralism
• Bridging social and economic gaps
Additionally, Fellows engage in monthly enrichment programs and periodic site visits to further develop their understanding of Israel, Israeli activism, and their role as activists both in Israel and at home. Fellows also receive training in leadership and community development. Because Fellows intern full time in an Israeli NGO, successful applicants must have either excellent Hebrew language skills, or good Hebrew with strong Arabic skills. Living expenses are covered by a modest stipend.

The Fellowship year runs from September 1, 2010 - June 30, 2011 and completed applications, including two letters of reference, are due on February 22, 2010. Israeli permanent residents are not eligible to receive an NIF/SHATIL William Frankel Social Justice Fellowship. Applications are available at http://www.newisraelfund.org.uk/

Fellowship Background
The William Frankel Social Justice Fellowship is part of an international social justice fund run by NIF international; New Israel Fund in the USA has established a Social Justice Fellowship model which enables a cadre of post-university Jewish young adults to spend 10 months immersed in the movement for social change in Israel. NIF has a 12-year history in Fellowship programming. In 1997, the Nomi Fein Social Justice Fellowship was established by Nomi's family after her sudden death at the age of 30. Four years later, a second Social Justice fellowship was created to honour the life and memory of Rabbi Richard J. Israel. In 2008, thanks to the generosity of NIF donors, the NIF/SHATIL Social Justice Fellowship was again expanded to its current size of five Fellows annually. Similarly, The William Frankel Fellows will act as agents of social change, actively pursuing social justice to contribute to a just, democratic, and equitable society in Israel.

About the New Israel Fund and SHATIL
The New Israel Fund (NIF) was established in 1979 to strengthen democracy and promote social justice in Israel, and is today Israel's foremost social-change institution. Specifically, it works to advance the following objectives: Fighting for civil and human rights; Promoting religious tolerance and pluralism; Closing the social and economic gaps in Israeli society; and Protecting Israel's environment.

Since its founding, NIF has granted more than £140 million to more than 800 Israeli non-profit organizations. But NIF is far more than a grant maker; NIF is a unique working and philanthropic partnership of North Americans, Israelis, and Europeans, providing more than 1,300 Israeli non-profit organizations with financial and technical support each year.

In 1982, NIF established SHATIL, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Centre for Social Change Organizations in Israel. SHATIL builds organizational capacity of NIF grantees and similar organizations by providing training, consultation, coalition-building assistance, and other services.

PAST US SOCIAL JUSTICE FELLOWSHIP UPDATES

Kevin Dwarka—

I am spending my NIF Social Justice Fellowship at the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a legal organization devoted to improving environmental quality in Israel through litigation and legislative initiatives.

At the IUED, I am working on a new initiative, the Israel Smart Growth Policy Project, which aims to redress the environmental impacts of rising levels of auto-dependency in Israel.

As part of this initiative, I am examining ways of achieving a better integration between Israel's mass transit investments and future urban development. Currently, I am looking at the success and failure of smart growth regulations and laws in other countries and analyzing whether or not these interventions are feasible or appropriate for the Israeli context. By the end of my fellowship, I hope to formulate concrete recommendations for public policies that would encourage transit-oriented development in Israel.

Josh Berer—

Hello! My name is Josh Berer, I am one of the recipients of the SHATIL Social Justice Fellowship in Israel. I'm writing to thank you for your generosity, kindness, and commitment to advancing social justice causes in our homeland. This is a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and I am so grateful to you for supporting me in this endeavor.

In university I majored in Arabic, and spent my freshman year in Israel learning Hebrew. As a result of these languages, I am working in an organization that strives for citizens rights among the Bedouin Arab population of the Negev. The organization is called the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, and we represent the 45 villages and 76,000 people who live in the Negev and are denied access to water, electricity, sewage, roads, or any other basic services one expects from an industrialized democracy. I am in charge of international advocacy, and from time to time I serve as a translator when foreigners come to tour the villages to get an idea of the situation.

It is very interesting, very challenging work, and I love the people I work with very much. It has been a dream of mine for many years to come to Israel and live with the Bedouin, and thanks to you that dream is a reality.

Toda, Shukran, Thank you!
Josh Berer

Sharon Rose Goldberg—

Before I left the states, I saw a film about fair trade chocolate. I knew a little about the idea of fair trade--independent certification on a number of agricultural products that certified standards of worker treatment and fair pay for farmers--but seeing this film put the importance of fairly traded goods into perspective. The cocoa farmers could afford to have schools for their kids and healthcare, luxuries they had never been able to hope for before. At the end of the film, representatives of a fair trade chocolate company showed off their fancy gourmet chocolate bars.

Only there was one problem. I can't afford to pay $6 for a chocolate bar, and neither can most of my friends.

Now, through your support and the Fellowship from the New Israel Fund I work on a fair trade project in Israel that aims to answer this very basic problem. In most cases, "fair trade" is a framework western nations use to import goods from the global south with knowledge that the goods were not produced with exploited human labor or environmental degradation. But in Israel and Palestine, the economic gaps are so great that, essentially, there are people within Israeli and Palestinian societies living in third-world conditions. It is this relationship--between local producers and local consumers--that our fair trade project involves. This new model of local fair trade being developed in Israel and Palestine is unique and brimming with potential.

My placement organization, Peulah Yerukah (Green Action), works with olive farmers and producers of organic jams, spices, and fruit liquors, and sells them to Israeli consumers in a fair trade framework. I have so enjoyed working here. I feel the fair trade program had a huge potential for impact. My job has to do with opening new markets for the fair trade products, especially internationally. This month, we are starting a pilot program I initiated to partner with community organizations and schools to sell our fair trade goods as a fundraiser for their own organization. It's a great way to expand our project--benefitting the producers with greater sales, the partner organizations with a new funding source, and the fair trade movement with a new way to educate people about fair trade.

In addition to my time at Green Action, I am spending one day a week at Teatron HaMartef (Basement Theater) for at-risk teens. The kids come from all over Jerusalem from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and face incredible hardships—poverty, drug addiction, violence in the family, and problems in school.

The theater teaches teens valuable life lessons which they are often lacking such as personal responsibility and how to take part in group activities. They learn how to dress and speak appropriately and how to act respectfully. Most importantly the teens gain self-confidence. Many of the teens feel so committed to the project that they spend their army/community service years working for the theater. Having met the organizers and the young people in the program (and having seen one of their plays--we saw a production of Faust during the SJF orientation) I have to say that I believe very strongly in the value of this program in changing the lives of kids from unimaginably tough backgrounds. More than just an after-school program, the Teatron HaMartef is a family and a place of stability and mutual respect. In short, I feel that in the brief time I am here, I can make a difference in a meaningful way.

Ilana Sichel—Nomi Fein Fellow 2008-09

Over the past two months on the job at Ir Amim ("City of Nations" or "City of Peoples"), I have learned the history and daily political processes that shape the fragmented and fragile city of Jerusalem. Not just the political capital of the state of Israel, but the most prominent spiritual capital of Jews, Muslims, and Christians across the world, Jerusalem has long been at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This battle gets played out daily, through demolitions and evacuations of Palestinian homes to pave the way for settler movements and supposedly "national" parks, through terror attacks on Israelis that strengthen the undercurrent of existential fear, and through headlines and public discourse in the current municipal and national election season.

My work at Ir Amim ranges from researching an ongoing sixty-year old legal case regarding property rights in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and interviewing lawyers and residents in preparation for publishing a report on the matter, to training to lead English-speaking groups on tours along the route of the separation barrier to understand the political and demographic realities of the city. I am looking forward to continuing these projects and taking on more work and am very much enjoying being on staff at an organization whose work--and analytical framework--I so deeply admire.