Creating a social entrepreneurship network to promote urban and community development
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First time in Israel –intensive local leadership development program for residents who are not government employees.
Twenty residents of Eilat and the environs - educators, businesspeople, media figures, army officers, and social entrepreneurs - recently completed the two-year Mandel Community Leadership Development Program in Eilat, a joint initiative of the Eilat municipality and the Mandel Center for Leadership in the Negev. |
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Participants, who were chosen in part on the basis of their involvement in the region - in social affairs, education, economics, the environment, social services, culture, the media, etc. - undertook to contribute to the Eilat area for three years after the end of the program. “We have to encourage initiatives and partnerships with social entrepreneurs,” stated Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevy at the graduation ceremony. "This is the only way we can move Eilat forward.”
Designed to training a community of high-caliber leaders capable of working together and separately to spearhead change and help upgrade the city, the program dealt with diverse issues relating to Israel in general, but specifically to Eilat. These included local government and civil society, multiculturalism, socioeconomic gaps and their impact on educational indicators, social services, immigrant absorption, and resort towns. The group also examined issues of social planning and leadership and learned how to effect change.
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This is the first time that a local leadership development program in Israel has targeted residents who are not local government employees. "The idea behind the program was to promote the city’s development by encouraging the active involvement of local residents," says Dr. Itzhak (Kiki) Aharonovich, program director, "and to stimulate new ideas that have breadth of vision, to give them a platform, and to provide the tools needed to actualize them." |
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“Until I took part in the program, I thought mainly on the micro level and worked alone,” says Aviva Dekel, who started the Neve Tom project. “The program made me think on the macro level and proved the importance and effectiveness of teamwork..” The project, named for her son Tom, who fell while serving in the army, helps lone soldiers in Eilat without family in Israel, among others.
The impact of the Mandel program was confirmed by Alfred Michaelovich, director of Youth Advancement in Eilat: “We came out with lots of motivation to change things. Not to wait for things to happen on their own, but to strive to promote new initiatives.”
“The program provided the tools to work toward a vision based on a long-range perspective, the principles of justice and equality, the elimination of barriers, and a better quality of life in the city as a right, instead of shooting from the hip,” explains Jacob Steinberg, director of the Mandel Center for Leadership in the Negev:
Noting that a city’s strength depends in large measure on community leadership, together with cooperation between the municipality and the community, the Mayor stressed his commitment to the Mandel program and his desire to initiate additional programs of this sort.
To read more about the Mandel Center for Leadership in the Negev click here
