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1. Abbi Adest
Director, Matar Fund
Community Building
What it means?
Community building means supporting the foundational bonds that bring people together – in families, schools, neighborhoods, towns and cities and the nation as a whole. This includes establishing a shared agreement that in a given community, all members have the right to express themselves and their needs and the responsibility to protect this right among all members.
Why it matters?
Community is the core of social change. Relating to each other as individuals within the shared framework of community provides the opportunity for daily practice of the higher values we want to achieve in this world for ourselves and our children.
How can we promote it?
Our fund has been actively involved in building intentional communities (קהילות משימתיות) for the past five years in partnership with the Shachaf Fund. There are 230 of these communities across Israel. They range from an Ethiopian community in Gedera the supports social businesses for older immigrant women to a joint religious/secular community in Gilo adjacent to Mechinat Beit Yisrael. The communities aim to support their members and also the residents in the local neighborhoods and cities where they are located.
Anyone in Israel can become a change agent by finding out how they can serve their own local community better.