Zvi Bentwich of the NALA Foundation: New Approaches to AIDS and Other Diseases

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Zvi Bentwich, President of the NALA Foundation. Photo courtesy and ©  NALA Foundation

Public-health activist Zvi Bentwich has committed his life to combating AIDS in Israel and Africa.Zvi Bentwich was the first physician in Israel to deal extensively with AIDS. In the 1990s, his research demonstrated the link between immune-system deficiencies and intestinal parasites (often euphemistically termed “neglected tropical diseases,” or NTDs). He is a cofounder of the NALA Foundation, whose mission is to overcome poverty, cure NTDs, and fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

“It boils down to being optimistic and believing that you can make a change. Like everything, you have to have the vision and to believe that it can happen. ”

— Zvi Bentwich

 Like many who are involved in humanitarian aid, Professor Bentwich hopes that someday his services will no longer be needed. As he explains, he is helping people to learn how to help themselves:

. . . Schistosomiasis is a water-borne disease; it is a typical example of how you can get infected when you don’t have health education or straightforward information about how not to get infected. It’s very simple: you get infected if you are exposed to where these parasites are. So if you go barefoot into a puddle or a stream, then you can get infected. If you know that you should not go barefoot, you cover your feet. It’s as simple as that.

You can do mass drug administration, but you also have to deal with the causes of the disease, with clean water and sanitation. Health education is also part and parcel of the treatment. If you work only with drugs, you will not get very far. Maybe the population will get better for a few months, but then they will get reinfected if they don’t understand what can be done to prevent getting infected again.

First we developed a survey and figured out what questions needed to be asked. And we recruited good partners in the area. We’ve had great success with a very impressive Ethiopian NGO called Rift Valley Children and Women Development, and with another NGO called OSSA, the Organization for Support Services for AIDS. They understood very quickly that what we were doing was a good thing.

When we did our survey in Mekelle, Ethiopia to our surprise, we found that in a third of the communities that we surveyed, between 80 and 100 percent had this infection. And we saw that the geographic distribution of the infections fitted with parts of Mekelle and the surrounding area that had problems with the water supply. The children were going into streams that were highly infested with these parasites. So the percentages made sense.

So we started intervening. We worked with the local health and education systems, parent-teacher associations, women’s groups, and other groups within the community. In addition, we sent over volunteer delegations, mainly from Ben-Gurion University, who focused on health education and hygiene activities. They worked with local students from Mekelle University and empowered them to initiate advocacy projects so the word would go out to all the schools in the city. Israel’s MASHAV helped too: they invested in the construction of new latrines.

One thing has led to another, and we’ve had dramatic results.  We watched the level of infection go down—at first from 80–90 percent down to 20 percent, and later to less than 5 percent. Changing habits can be a very difficult thing. It boils down to being optimistic and believing that you can make a change. Like everything, you have to have the vision and to believe that it can happen.

NALA Foundation >

Center for Emerging Tropical Diseases and AIDS at Ben-Gurion University >

The NALA Foundation: New Answers for Diseases

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A child learns about the importance of hand washing in a NALA Foundation workshop in Ethiopia. Photo courtesy Sahar Gamliel / NALA Foundation

The NALA Foundation’s mission is to overcome poverty, cure neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The NALA Foundation has treated many people and dramatically reduced infection rates. It has been awarded the prestigious Grand Challenges Award for innovative ideas in public health (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).

“NALA’s mission is to overcome poverty, cure neglected tropical diseases, and fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.”

In addition, working together with the United Nations World Food Program, the NALA Foundation has started treating people living with HIV in Ethiopia. Zvi Bentwich, president of the foundation, explains “Our strategy in Ethiopia, right from the beginning, has been to start with a survey to find out what the situation is, the prevalence of infection, and what are the attitudes, practices, and knowledge of the people. You then have to train the trainers—on site, in Ethiopia—because of course we can’t be there forever.”

NALA Foundation >  

Center for Emerging Tropical Diseases and AIDS at Ben-Gurion University >

HIPPY: Educating Preschoolers and Their Families

HIPPY-trained mother working with her child. Photo courtesy HIPPY

HIPPY was founded in 1969 by Avima D. Lombard, an American scholar of education who emigrated to Israel. Lombard recognized that Israeli-born children of immigrants from North African and Asian countries were not achieving in school as well as their peers. Her proposal was to take a close look at the homes and family life of the children: “Perhaps we [can] find a way to bring changes into the home that would help prepare children to deal with the demands of school.” In focusing on the home setting, she understood that there were two major areas of concern: “the educational enrichment of the child, and strengthening the mother’s self-esteem through her activities as an educator in the home setting.”

“A global institution, involved with thousands of families around the world.”

The program that evolved from these observations is HIPPY (known in Hebrew as Ha’Etgar, meaning “The Challenge”). What started as a small pilot study with a handful of children in Tel Aviv’s Hatikvah neighborhood led eventually to HIPPY being sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Education, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and other organizations. Today, more than four decades after Lombard’s initial idea, HIPPY has become a global institution, involved with thousands of families around the world, in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Austria, Germany, Italy, Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia. In 2015, the HIPPY International program was selected by the Lego Foundation as one of thirty pioneering programs around the world that promote play as an essential tool in learning.

HIPPY ISRAEL >  

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LOTEM: Nature Programs for People with Special Needs

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LOTEM participants on a hike. Photo by Itai Aviran, courtesy LOTEM

LOTEM is an Israel-based organization that offers excursions, nature clubs, and creative workshops in nature to people with physical challenges and other special needs. It was founded by Amos Ziv, an enthusiastic outdoorsman who, while hiking in the Israeli countryside, encountered a group of visually impaired teenagers and realized how difficult it must be for them to enjoy outings as he did. He recognized that in order for special-needs hikers to be able to enjoy excursions and activities in rural environments, suitable guidance and trails were essential. In 1993 Ziv founded LOTEM, and soon after teamed up with Sorin Hershcu, a quadriplegic who was wounded during the IDF rescue of hostages in Entebbe in 1976. Today, the organization has centers in Jerusalem and the North of Israel, and serves more than thirty thousand special-needs participants—youngsters with physical challenges as well as women and children living in shelters—every year. Its motto: “Making Nature Accessible.”

“Making nature accessible to people with physical challenges.”

Among LOTEM’s programs are “Four Seasons” (activities for special-needs people in natural settings throughout the year); “Mother Nature” (outings for women and children who live in shelters); and “Integra-Teva.” This last program brings together Jews and Arabs from all parts of Israel to learn about organic products from the Middle East as well as about ancient agricultural techniques used in the region throughout the ages. Each year, more than six hundred children and adults—all with special needs—take part in Integra-Teva. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze make pita bread over an open fire, grape juice in a wine press, and olive oil in an olive press (all specially designed to be accessible to people with physical challenges). Working together on a common task, despite differences in race, religion, or culture, can create bonds that might otherwise seem impossible.

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Photo by Itai Aviran courtesy Lotem

Innovators Reem and Imad Younis, of Alpha Omega, makers of a “GPS” system for the brain

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Israel has an Arab population of about 20 percent: currently that is some 1.7 million people. Yet the percentage of Israeli Arabs involved in the booming field of high tech is far lower—only about 2 percent of Israeli technology workers are Arab. This gap is one of the many challenges in the country today—but it is beginning to lessen, bit by bit. Arabs are represented at Israel’s top universities in numbers that correspond more closely with their percentage in the overall population. And the numbers of Arab engineers at the large Israeli branches of multinational tech companies such as Cisco, Google, Intel, and Microsoft are starting to climb.

“When we employ people from different cultures, we can go even further, because each one thinks differently—and that can create inventiveness. ”

— Imad Younis, Alpha Omega cofounder

In the city of Nazareth, a small startup ecosystem is coming to life, with the help of Arab-focused venture capital funds and undertakings like the Nazareth Business Incubator Center and Stef Wertheimer’s industrial park.

Alpha Omega is one of the Arab-directed companies with headquarters at Wertheimer’s Nazareth park. Founded in 1993 by Reem Younis and her husband, Imad, the company produces cutting-edge products for neurosurgery and neuroscience research. They make a device that functions like a “GPS” system for the brain—recording neural activity, stimulating neural tissue, processing and analyzing data. It is used by neurosurgeons in the treatment patients with a variety of disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and dystonia (a syndrome that causes involuntary muscle spasms).

Reem and Imad Younis met at the Technion, where she was studying civil engineering and he electrical engineering. Establishing Alpha Omega was a financial leap into the void for both of them: the young couple’s starting capital was comprised of the money from selling their Volkswagen Jetta, and four gold coins donated by Imad’s father. Over the following years, the Younises edged the company forward. Reem recalls:

We didn’t begin with an idea to “start a startup”; our only idea was to bring high tech to Nazareth, to the Arab sector, the Arab community. And we called it “Alpha Omega” because the idea was—we’ll do everything, from A to Z. Little by little we went into the medical-equipment business. We are there in the operating room with doctors treating people with neurological and mental disorders, helping them to get better.

While helping people to get better is the Younises’ primary aim, they also have a goal to help Nazareth succeed as a city of diversity and technology. As of this writing, Alpha Omega is thriving: the company employs more than sixty people—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—the majority are Arab (reflecting the demographic of their city). Imad Younis says that the mix of backgrounds has been valuable to Alpha Omega’s success: “When we employ people from different cultures, we can go even further, because each one thinks differently—and that can create inventiveness. . . . We can work together to achieve common goals.”

Alpha Omega’s “GPS systems for neurosurgeons” are used in hundreds of research labs and hospitals around the world. The Younises are proud to say that several of their former employees have gone on to form companies of their own. Most recently, Alpha Omega has released a new product that supports both clinical and research functions. And after securing regulatory approval in China, Alpha Omega has made its first major step into the Asian market.

Reem and Imad Younis are modeling and promoting entrepreneurship among the next generation of Israeli Arabs, encouraging them to take hold of the future and do something great with it.

Alpha Omega > 

The Ted Arison Family Foundation

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Ted Arison, the late husband of The Desert and the Cities Sing author Lin Arison, was a man of extraordinary vision, and that vision remains alive in many forms. The Ted Arison Family Foundation—founded by Ted and his daughter Shari Arison in 1981—is the philanthropic arm of the Arison Group, a business and philanthropic entity that today operates in forty countries around the world.

“The Arison Family Foundation is a multigenerational philanthropic venture.”

The Ted Arison Family Foundation continues as a multi-generational enterprise; its board includes Shari Arison’s four children: Jason (Chairman), David and Cassie Arison, and Daniel Arison Dorsman.

Jason is the man behind the Artport exhibition space and artists’ residency program, and David works to ensure the efficiency of Israel’s water systems with Miya.

Cassie Arison’s involvement in the Foundation revolves around her passion for creating a healthier and more stable environment for future generations.

And Daniel is the latest family member to join the Foundation’s board, but he surely won’t be the last; the next generations of Arisons are on their way, ensuring that Ted’s vision and spirit will be stewarded by the family long into the future.

Ted Arison Family Foundation > 

Arab and Jewish students work together at Hand in Hand

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Arab and Jewish students working together at Jerusalem’s Hand in Hand

“We are bringing hope, success, dialogue, understanding and the ability to live together to a new generation. ”

— Yaffa Grossberg, teacher, Hand in Hand

Founded in 1997 by educators Amin Khalaf and Lee Gordon, Hand in Hand: The Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel started with the basic observation that Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel operate separately in virtually all aspects of life, and that this separation is especially notable (and influential) in the country’s K–12 public-education system. Khalaf and Gordon wanted to start a school that would bridge that separation.

Hand in Hand’s curriculum is bilingual—Hebrew and Arabic—with two teachers in every classroom, and English is taught beginning in third grade. As of this writing, there are six campuses around the country, where more than 1,300 students are educated every year. Over the coming decade, administrators hope to build ten to fifteen more Hand in Hand schools throughout the country. Though funding is never easy—not everyone believes that such schools should exist—Hand in Hand does receive some support from the state, supplemented with tuition and backing from individual donors, private philanthropies like the Jerusalem Foundation, and the U.S. government (which in 2012 gave Hand in Hand a million-dollar grant to help launch three new campuses).

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Children at Hand in Hand: The Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel 

Hand in Hand’s K–12 school in Jerusalem is located in the southern part of the city, between the Arab community of Beit Safafa and the Jewish neighborhood of Patt. Its campus is made up of handsome stone buildings, with halls hung with colorful murals of handprints, as well as paintings and photographs by students.  

Yaffa Grossberg, a teacher at Hand in Hand, succinctly reminds us of the school’s mission: “In this city fraught with tension and conflict, we are bringing hope, success, dialogue, understanding and the ability to live together to a new generation.”

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