From Rod Nichols, AFGG Senior Advisor

Rod.nichols@verizon.net

A 21st Century Tikkun Olam–Possible?

Today, in many parts of the world, “the life of man” is not much different than it was four hundred years ago when Hobbes said that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Despite spectacular progress in agriculture and industry across much of the globe, large swaths of the developing world face cruel conditions: avoidable maternal deaths, shortages of energy, and inability to sustain abundant agriculture.  We can do better.

This is the underlying premise for a bold new initiative: a 21^st Century Tikkun Olam.  Its framework was announced in October by the Reut Institute and the Alliance For Global Good.   The humanitarian imperative is to help 250 million people with in a decade. Planning is underway now. Significant fund-raising will follow soon.

“Repairing the world,” is both audacious and profound.  For thousands of years this goal has run throughout the highest and broadest traditions of Jewish thought.  Comparable goals have been set by many religions and volunteer associations. In 2002 such commitments are daunting.  Where to begin?

Two fundamental criteria apply: any program must be technologically feasible, and it must be operationally viable.  From the technical perspective, many countries have solved the problems of, for example, maternal health and agricultural productivity.  Israel, as a special case, the “start up nation,” has had enormous success and the experience can be shared with all countries trapped in a web of preventable diseases, arid farming, and a lack of water.

Precedents also exist in the many non-governmental global organizations working all over the world, engaging communities, solving problems. A central task is to distill best practices that can be adapted elsewhere.  Further, the private sector in the developed world has strong reasons to “go global” with their combination of talent, corporate responsibility, and economic incentives. Technological savvy from across the public and private spheres can be brought to bear cooperatively in a revitalized Tikkun Olam.

Attaining organizational viability, however, will be complicated by the public’s rising disaffection and fatigue with “foreign aid.”  As many opinion polls starkly reveal, that frustration with the uncertain benefits of “assistance,” has swept much of the developed world. Yet many people recognize the powerful case for Tikkun Olam. It remains compelling. And as Dr. Johnson said, “nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.”  New dimensions of collaboration will be essential for this new program to survive the undertows likely to be encountered.  Large teams of experts and volunteers, supported by ample funds, will be crucial.

Kafka’s famous aphorism must be kept in mind as the recruitment of people and the gathering of resources for a stepped up new Tikkun Olam.  He said: “ You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided.”

So even as we take account of the world’s shaky economy, we must set aside facile skepticism about any new global challenge and slash away all complacency.   Instead, view 21^st Century Tikkun Olam as an inspiring banner to enable the design of robust programs built upon pragmatism in effective service and a commitment to sustainable capacity-building.  Pursued well, this leapfrogging initiative will go beyond sporadic impacts. For it can prevent conflict and build understanding among nations in the Middle East, and across every continent, wherever desperate needs  clearly can be seen.  The long-range consequences will be things you cannot see or touch: civility, volunteerism, justice, courage, modernization, and, one hopes, peace.

From Rod Nichols, AFGG Senior Advisor

Rod.nichols@verizon.net

Great Ideas and Organization for Action

“Great ideas,” remarked Albert Camus, “come into the world as gently as doves.  Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope.”

In Baltimore, on November 12, at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, a great idea was underlined and a campaign for action was announced. Now the action must be organized.  The great idea – Tikkun Olam, the call to heal the world, a profound tradition in Jewish history – is the base for a new program conceived by the Alliance For Global Good and the Reut Institute.

Among the eleven “principles” in the powerful strategy of what the organizers dub “21^st Century Tikkun Olam”, designed to reach 250 million people over a decade are: “partnerships with emerging local leadership driving change within their communities; and leverage through partnerships with global institutions and other nations as well as private sector involvement.”

This is a tall order. It will, of course, require organization.  But what kind of organization?  “Volunteers” don’t want to be ordered around. Local groups don’t want to be commanded by a distant headquarters, much less by multiple bureaucracies. How can we nourish the “great idea” of 21^st Century Tikkun Olam so that, as Camus said, “ it will negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history?”

One perspective flows from the work of Elinor Ostrom, the first (and only) woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.  Her research showed the local users are often in the best position to solve the “tragedy of the commons,” those circumstances in which incentives for individual action may deplete the community’s resources, such as in overfishing or cleaning up parks.  So the challenge for the 21 st Century Tikkun Olam initiative will be to mesh global vision with “emerging local leadership”. Matching a global scan of humanitarian needs with the energy of local capabilities, and with the program’s available technology and know-how, will demand humility and collaboration.

At least two other tough problems will have to be confronted.  First, what are the benchmarks – for the character of the problem and for progress?  “When you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers,” said the great physicist Lord Kelvin, “ you have scarcely advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”  There is no question that “measuring” humanitarian work is challenging. But it would be irresponsible to glibly dismiss this issue.  Only hard problems merit the depth of  commitment implicit in the power of Tikkun Olam.  And only genuine solutions, or great gains, merit applause. If “healing” is merely palliative it is not sustainable.

A second problem is: how to build authentic partnerships among groups that prefer to go on their own?  What’s in it for them?  Indeed, this may be the harder nut to crack.  It’s akin to “headless nails,” the bane of incompetent carpenters like me.  Easy to put in place, these nails are nearly impossible to remove or replace. Some say that may be the situation with many Jewish and other humanitarian organizations: they were  founded by good people, funded by generous philanthropists and governments, and are working well in every corner of the world.  Their nails are in place; they resist change. What will induce then to join a movement that, if it works, will do far more than they can do individually?  One answer is trust in the leadership of the new alliances that must be shaped for a global Tikkun Olam to be born healthy.  Trust will minimize the perceived risk of losing resources or identity because the needed new funds will be sought jointly and shared fairly, and the process of forming partnerships will be founded in broad consultation.

Let us honor the “great idea” of a 21^st Century Tikkun Olam. Let us seize the opportunity to undertake careful planning and pilot projects.

From Rod Nichols, AFGG Senior Advisor

Rod.nichols@verizon.net

Musing about frontiers for science, Isaac Newton, the 19^th century genius, said “…the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” He understood, profoundly, that even his own extraordinary insights in physics were but “a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary.” That outlook also applies to the endless frontiers for innovations among the operations of non-profit groups.

For every social “mission”  – from health and education to agriculture – innovations are always emerging, sometimes through research, often through “disruptive” technologies such as telecommunications, or through renewed organizational zest such as inspired leadership by volunteers. When budgets are tight (are they ever loose?), an excellent non-profit will figure out a way to innovate in order to pursue its programs more effectively. Then it will be marked for greater success.

This is why the Alliance For Global Good launched this year the first round of an internationally competitive Innovation Fund. The four winners were announced in October.  Every one charted an unusual path to earn income. Each winner uncovered a “prettier shell” on a beach it knew well.

The Alliance designed its “value proposition” for operating the Innovation Fund. First, it brought together the lessons learned from the difficulties most non-profits experience in “going to market” with new initiatives. One lesson was the chronic shortage of flexible capital needed to innovate, to open a new line of “business.”  Second, the Alliance decide to proceed with a national competition and funded all of the staff and infrastructure required to run the competition and assure the quality controls, with the highest standards. The Alliance indulged in no ad hoc or idiosyncratic selection of grantees.  Instead it found the best from a fair and open competition.

Now the Alliance seeks donor-partners to expand the second round of competition for the Innovation Fund in 2013.  Whatever a donor’s interests – helping the environment, or reducing poverty, or promoting economic development – a wide-open request-for-proposals, as with the 2012 process, will revealed a remarkable range of topics and organizations.  So almost any donor’s priorities can be fulfilled.

Opportunities in 2013 are available for a donor to participate in the selection process, and to be named in a grant award. Any donor to the Alliance’s Innovation Fund will ensure that its gifts go to leading organizations. The groups will have won a stiff global competition. And these best-in-class groups will strengthen their  independence, better buffered from the fashions in philanthropic and governmental policies.

Consider a final point about what is important in this initiative. Successful innovation is seamlessly related to organizational capacity. This is especially true for beleaguered non-profits. As Clayton Christenson put the point in his classic book,  “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” writing about the complexity of pursuing innovation in for-profit ventures: “Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources… so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right.”  That is why the Alliance’s Innovation Fund convened a tough and experienced “pitch panel” to interview the 2012 finalists.  The central question in this final review was whether the organization had the savvy, the resilience, the business toughness, to succeed.

Yes, Newton had it right: science faces an ocean of possibilities and puzzles to be cracked. Similarly, nonprofit groups face an ocean of possible innovations to be explored. Discovering and seizing them takes insight, persistence, a bit of luck, and a dose of unencumbered capital.  That’s what the Alliance For Global Good aims to enable.

[One of the Alliance's themes is celebrating and promoting philanthropy--particularly American philanthropy.  Alliance team member Rod Nichols offers this perspective:]

“Trouble shared is trouble halved.” This old saying is as true for nations as it is for individuals. It is also deeply embedded in the American traditions of voluntary associations and of philanthropy at home and abroad.

While not widely recognized, private American “assistance” to the rest of the world is enormous.  This helps to solve “troubles” and fulfill aspirations for communities everywhere.  In 2010, the most recent year for which reliable data are available, American private philanthropy to the developing world reached a total of $39 billion. In addition, private US investment was about $161 billion.  On top of this, official US government aid, based upon American tax revenues, was another roughly $30 billion. {These data come from the Hudson Institute’s authoritative, indispensable “Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances 2012.”)

Among the many goals in mind by these donors and investors, in thousands of ways, the expansive American-funded activities have educational benefits. Some are directly aimed at K-12 children, training for energy and environmental programs, and infrastructure.  Some are mixed purposes. For example, US firms conduct extensive training for the staff in their facilities abroad, and health-oriented initiatives inevitably encompass education for staff, patients, and families.

No other country – yes, no other – does nearly as much as the US. For example, count all of the funding from Japan, England, and the Scandinavian countries — among the most generous nations. The sum of their financial aid, taken together, barely equals 20% of the US private giving. A major reason for this difference among international donors is the unique, historic generosity of the American society.

My colleague, Dr. Susan U. Raymond, a consultant to the Alliance For Global Good, smartly nailed the uniquely American, cross-national perspective in her keynote address to an Australian conference in 2010: “Philanthropy is the voluntary commitment of personal resources to addressing problems that we SHARE (emphasis added) together.”  Since almost all developing countries share problems and goals with us, and for reasons dating back to our founding and flowing from the values Toqueville underscored so powerfully, the US has always fostered private, voluntary solutions to social problems around the world.  Governments cannot do it all, certainly not today, and self-reliance is the most reliable path to sustainability.

Yet the world, as Leonard Kaplan, founder of the Alliance For Global Good, has said, remains “in crisis.”  Part of the crisis — a central challenge for all nations around the world — is in education.  That is why education is one of the five pillars of the AFGG’s philanthropic mission.

A deep reason for this priority on education, as Winston Churchill emphasized, is that “empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” His observation is even more profoundly relevant today. Technology-based economic growth is imperative and education is the foundation of modernization and growth.

Indeed, The economist and Nobel laureate Theodore W. Schultz updated Churchill’s sentiment in his 1981 book, “Investing in People: The Economics of Population Quality.” The wealth of nations, Schultz argued, is not limited by land or minerals. It comes instead predominantly from “the acquired abilities of people – their education, experience, skills, and health.”

Yet nations have been slow to heed that wisdom, and what needs doing has not been done. Children’s elementary education, particularly for girls, is not a high priority for too many governments. And making this worse, middle school and university education in many developing countries is not affordable for most families.  Hence,  American philanthropy’s emphasis on educational goals.  American generosity in programs for education, linked tightly to beating poverty, is urgently demanded,  freely offered, welcomed.

Just as students must master the 3R’s, non-profit organizations must master the 3C’s of curiosity, competition, and compassion.  It’s easy to glibly roll out these words;  ever so much harder to master the fusion of these attributes essential for success.

Curiosity means not only the capacity to imagine better social circumstances—a mission of change—but also the wit to conceive how to make change happen. Competition always winnows the better ideas for that process.  And it is Compassion—the capacity to empathize with the people who need change, who are to be served – that drives almost all nonprofit activity.

Conscience calls for society to support education, food, housing, and health care. But when countries undergo economic upheaval –as is widespread these days – there is justifiable question of whether the social imperatives of conscience can be reconciled fairly with the relentlessly unsettling rigors of global markets, demanding higher productivity.

The chronic challenge is to ensure that constructive economic change is humane. That is where gifted social entrepreneurs have an opportunity to lead, to combine the 3C’s in continuously adapting paths to responsible progress.  Realizing this progress requires open economic and intellectual marketplaces, competitions based upon merit, and a civil society building momentum for effective social change.

The Alliance For Global Good’s new Innovation Fund was born from this philosophy.  The Fund aims to support social change with genuinely reliable sustainability.

Presently, many non-profits are so stressed in maintaining their operations that insights, born of curiosity about change in those operations, may seem a luxury.  But as the Nobel prize winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz remarked, “It is a good idea to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps (you) young.”   One such hypothesis—that nonprofit support must come primarily from philanthropic giving—seems ripe for the trash pile.   The Innovation Fund asks what changes, what new ideas, can bring new streams of income and higher impacts in the programs?

An exemplary innovation was charted by Sweet Beginnings, part of North Lawn Employment Network, a non-profit in Chicago whose leader Brenda Palms-Barber, spoke at the AFGG’s conference in Washington DC in November.   North Lawn’s mission is to provide transitional job training for the formerly incarcerated.  To earn revenue beyond the traditional support from governmental and philanthropic sources, the employees of the organization produce honey and honey-based products for retail sales.

Another example is Changemakers, an initiative of the Alliance’s Program partner, Ashoka.  This effort creates open source participation in a “collaborative competition” to identify innovative solutions on topics that have ranged from clean water to geo-tourism. The results are impressive.

The Kauffman Foundation blazed the remark: “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought” on the cover of its 2009 Thoughtbook.  Leaders and staff in every nonprofit must create the means to seize the future they see.  Curiosity opens up options for change that will serve missions.  And competitions sort out best options.

Earned revenues by nonprofits – as the Innovation Fund’s competition aims to stimulate – acknowledges that siloed sources of revenue perpetuate a perception that economic activity has no place in the world of social change  As a young non-profit staffer, surveying the field, but thinking beyond accepted thought,  said in last year’s revealing survey conducted by Changing Our World: “I am in business school working for my MBA.…  {C]reating sustainable revenue streams and thinking more like for-profit agencies would go a long way toward advancing the field.”

Rodney W. Nichols

Post by Jerry Chasen, Alliance VP on January 18, 2012

This past November 15th, the Alliance produced the Inaugural Bipartisan Conference on Innovation in Giving and Philanthropy. The one-day meeting at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC featured an Honorary Host Committee including House Maj. Leader Eric Cantor, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Susan Collins, Joe Lieberman, and Mark Udall, and U.S. Reps. John Lewis and Pat Tiberi.

Judging from the comments we got around the conference, we weren’t the only ones who thought the content was great, and the level of discourse was very high. Moderated by veteran news analyst Jeff Greenfield, the program included presentations by Dr. Diana Wells of Ashoka, Dennis Whittle, Founder of Global Giving, Meg Garlinghouse of LinkedIn, Jacquelline Fuller of Google, Amy Bell of JPMorgan, and Deanna Castellini, Founder of UGive.

The program closed with the Alliance announcing the establishment of “a new fund to identify and promote breakthrough ideas in philanthropy.” The announcement went on to say that “one likely focus of the fund is innovation in nonprofit financing.” Because we wanted to take into account thoughts and ideas shared at the conference, we held off announcing much detail about the fund, including its scope and operations, and promised those would be would be made public early in 2012.

We are engaged in formulating those details, and as is often the case with money to spend, everyone has their own idea of the best way to do it. One idea under consideration would be a focus on existing medium-sized nonprofits. The goal would be to support them in developing innovative strategies, plans, or experiments to diversify their revenue streams on a sustainable basis, by accessing new types of social finance pools, collaborative funding mechanisms, or social enterprise capital or markets increasingly available. One of the conference panels focused on this subject with presentations by Ellen Spear of Heritage Museum and Gardens, and Brenda Palms-Barber of Sweet Beginnings, LLC.

Another idea suggests that the fund’s best use is as the anchor of a larger fund that would be available to complement the Alliance’s proposed “Collaboratory” work with its partners, Hunt Alternatives Fund, Ashoka, Synergos Institute, BenGurion University, Reut Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Assuming that initial exploration of our partners’ activity reveals gaps in current collective efforts that need to be addressed to achieve lasting impact on a set of agreed upon core issues, the fund could be used to source new solutions to fill gaps and amplify that impact.

We’re aware, as one of our team said, that donors generally feel that their contributions further innovation – the media is full of stories about the next best donor and approach. But true innovation is rare. The Alliance is very much about leverage – about using resources for maximum impact and without waste. It would be a shame to make less than the best use of this opportunity. Over the next few months, our team will be reaching out to many of the conference attendees to ask their advice about what structure and criteria for the fund would best further innovation in philanthropy.

We’re also interested in comments from the field. To be very clear, this is NOT a request for proposals – that may come depending upon the nature of the fund as finally conceived. And as with any source request to the crowd, there’s no promise to adopt. But we’re interested in hearing what people have to say.

So friends, what do you think? Consistent with the Alliance’s core criteria and areas of interest, what do you think would be the best use of this new, yet modestly sized Innovation Fund? Please comment below, post on our FaceBook page, or send us a Tweet!

Great business ideas grow or travel internationally to serve customers around the world. By contrast, no such market forces exist in the social sector. As a result, we reinvent the wheel many times over, do not use resources efficiently, and fail to use opportunities for learning and innovation where they are needed most. The Ashoka Globalizer assembles the supply and demand for globalizing change, and the architecture for this marketplace to grow. It does so by supporting the most advanced social entrepreneurs extend the impact of their innovations to create truly global change and transform entire fields – by building in-depth structured connections between leaders in the business and social sectors and creating knowledge to benefit entrepreneurs in both sectors.

The Globalizer Experience

The Ashoka Globalizer process involves five stages:

1. Identification of social entrepreneurs who are ready to go global;
2. Identification of cutting-edge strategy tracks that fit their work;
3. Identification of business entrepreneurs and other experts best suited for each of these tracks;
4. An intensive several-month local preparation and mentoring process that results in first-rate business plans;
5. A 3-day summit (March 26-28) with in-depth advising sessions and group ‘panel’ deliberations, access to business know-how, and sessions that explore different strategies for taking an idea to global impact;

After the summit, social and business entrepreneurs continue the mentoring and collaborative process through which fellows can share and get input on their plans and impact.

“Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere.
The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and bring it to scale.”
- Bill Clinton, Former US President

The Globalizer Summit is designed to work without long presentations and plenary meetings but rather focus on what entrepreneurs are best at: overcoming real world barriers for key social innovations by drawing on business experience, networks, and the creativity of the panelists. Over the course of one weekend, both social entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs leave with new approaches to their work, insights for their organizations, and a powerful new network.

Expected Outcomes

The proposed activities are designed to:

1. Provide the globalization infrastructure for social entrepreneurs so that their ideas travel and impact multiplies.
2. Develop a collaborative network of the world’s best practitioners including both social and business entrepreneurs, thus fostering collaboration and exchange of best practices and mutual learning across sectors.
3. Build the field beyond our immediate networks by surfacing, collecting and spreading unique insights on how to create economic and other important opportunities for the disadvantaged.

Globalizer Fellows & Alliance For Global Good’s Themes

The 5 thematic areas in which the Alliance for Global Good works are well represented amongst the 37 Globalizer Fellows selected in 2010 and 2011.

The Fellows roughly divide into the thematic areas as follows:

• World Health: 8 Fellows
• World Poverty: 11 Fellows
• World Education: 9 Fellows
• World Environment: 2 Fellows
• World Relationships of Nations: 7 Fellows

The 37 Globalizer Fellows come from 21 countries, across Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America. Their collective impact is already in the tens of millions and poised to grow rapidly into hundreds of millions of beneficiaries collectively.

Finally, everything Ashoka does conforms to the principles of Leverage, Scalabilty, Transparency, Sustainability and Collaboration. Indeed, it is this very set of shared values and guideposts that most indicate to us the wonderful fit between the Alliance and Ashoka.

BGU is working to develop cost-effective ways to desalinate water through solar energy.  Reflecting BGU’s spirit of collaboration with Israel’s neighbors, the University is conducting its research at one location in Jordan (Aqaba) and two locations in Israel (Hatzeva & Ashdod) which reflect an array of water salinities ranging from slightly brackish to highly saline.  This important project is backed by the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology and the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.   To date BGU’s team accomplished the following:

1. A meteorological station was installed at Hatzeva in order to monitor the local meteorological conditions. The station monitored solar global, diffuse and beam irradiation, barometric pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction over a multi-year period;
2. Alternative design configurations for the integration of solar and desalination technologies were reviewed and experimental testing was conducted in Hatzeva and Ashdod in order to select the most promising applications;
3. In Ashdod, the benefits of advanced feed pretreatment with ultrafiltration (UF) membranes in reverse osmosis seawater desalination were investigated by testing of an experimental UF-RO setup; and
4. The research team began its technical and economic feasibility study of solar-powered large scale desalination plants.  The preliminary results show that CSP desalination is a realistic economic future option for the freshwater production.

• www.aabgu.org
• info@aabgu.org

Other BGU initiatives AFGG has funded:

• Using Solar Power to Desalinate and Produce Fresh Water in Jordan & Israel
• Israel-Jordan Academic Emergency Medicine Collaboration
• Deworming the City of Mekele, Ethiopia - Supporting Professor Bentwich's Efforts

Under the direction of the world-renowned Professor Zvi Bentwich, BGU’s Center for Emerging Tropical Diseases and AIDS (CEMTA) focuses on the study, prevention and treatment of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) in the developing world. Of the NTDs recognized, schistosomiasis (a parasitic disease caused by several species of tremotodes, a parasitic worm of the genus schistosoma) accounts for a large percentage of the annual deaths caused by NTDs.    In collaboration with MASHAV, Ethiopia’s Center for Health, Nutrition, and Development, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and the Millennium City Initiative (MCI), CEMTA has embarked on the first stage of deworming in the northern Ethiopian city of Mekele.  To date, the project reached approximately 70,000 people of the city’s total population of 250,000, most of whom are schoolchildren, and has achieved dramatic results in decreasing the prevalence of schistosomiasis to almost zero in several of the treated populations. Yet, it is essential to deworm the entire city of Mekele within the next two years, and while the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and MASHAV, have endorsed and approved this process, additional funds are essential to making that happen.

• www.aabgu.org
• info@aabgu.org

Other BGU initiatives AFGG has funded:

• Using Solar Power to Desalinate and Produce Fresh Water in Jordan & Israel
• Israel-Jordan Academic Emergency Medicine Collaboration
• Deworming the City of Mekele, Ethiopia - Supporting Professor Bentwich's Efforts

Israel is known for its highly trained emergency medical teams who are often sent to nations around the world to assist in managing natural disasters and devastating terrorist attacks. BGU is an influential and seminal resource – a leading contributor to Israel’s high standards of emergency medicine, preparedness and response. BGU has assumed a prominent role in a new humanitarian program: the Israel-Jordan Academic Emergency Medicine Collaboration. The University already provides the only university-based academic degree for paramedics in the Middle East. This new initiative, funded in part by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MASHAV) reflects BGU’s and Israel’s commitment to humanitarian assistance and regional peace. Taught in Arabic and English, this far-reaching collaborative effort trains Jordanians – side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts — as paramedics equal to the professional caliber of Israelis in emergency situations. Currently, 14 Jordanian students take part in this groundbreaking program.

• www.aabgu.org
• info@aabgu.org

Other BGU initiatives AFGG has funded:

• Using Solar Power to Desalinate and Produce Fresh Water in Jordan & Israel
• Israel-Jordan Academic Emergency Medicine Collaboration
• Deworming the City of Mekele, Ethiopia - Supporting Professor Bentwich's Efforts