Program:
Project Interchange
- Budget:
-
$513,846
- Category:
-
International, Foreign Affairs & National Security
- Population Served:
-
Adults
Program Description:
Project Interchange develops and runs intensive weeklong educational programs in Israel for influential figures from the United States and around the world. These programs allow participants to explore the complex issues facing Israel in a transparent, balanced, and interactive manner. By building and maintaining an informed leadership among key constituencies – including governmental officials, ethnic and religious figures, industry leaders, journalists and university presidents – PI helps to secure the support of those in positions to enhance relations between Israel and other nations, counter biased impressions and support favorable public policies.
Program Long-Term Success:
Since its inception, Project Interchange has educated over 5,300 influential figures from more than 60 countries about Israel and the Middle East. The seminars are credited with cultivating deep and meaningful understanding of Israel in the participants.
Program Short-Term Success:
Introducing influential leaders from around the world to Israel and knowing that they will be vocal advocates and spokespeople for the Jewish state upon their return home.
Program Success Monitored by:
Participants are required to complete evaluation forms which ask about each presentor and site visited. Staff members involved with the planning, implementation, and hosting of each seminar complete evaluation forms. Through post-program activities (conference calls, local program activities, social networking opportunities, etc.) PI monitors speeches, articles and blogs prepared by project alumni.
Program Success Examples:
a. Dr. Robert A. Corrigan, president of San Francisco State University and a PI alumnus, issued a statement expressing concern over an on-campus event which “called for an academic and cultural boycott of one nation, Israel.” Corrigan states, “An academic boycott is a wrongheaded tactic that diminishes any institution that would pursue it. It is antithetical to this University’s values of inclusion and mutual respect.” Corrigan visited Israel twice with Project Interchange, first in 1993 as a part of a leadership delegation from Northern California, and again in 2008 on a University Presidents seminar.
b. Israel Gateway reports that, “Israel has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state of New York on industrial cooperation in the area of research & development. The cooperation agreement was signed by New York’s David Paterson and Israel’s Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.” Governor Paterson traveled to Israel with Project Interchange in 2007 as Lt. Governor of New York State.
c. Mats Skogkär, a Swedish editorial writer, discusses the “series of bizarre and unfounded allegations about the Israeli Defense Forces” made by Swedish tabloid, Aftonbladet. Skogkär visited Israel with Project Interchange in February 2008 as part of a delegation from Scandinavia.
Program:
Diplomatic Marathon
- Budget:
-
$50,000
- Category:
-
International, Foreign Affairs & National Security
- Population Served:
-
Adults
Program Description:
During meetings of the United Nations General Assembly, AJC representatives met privately with presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers in order to build support for issues of concern to Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.
Program Long-Term Success:
Furthering the organization’s mission of assuring the security and well-being of the Jewish people while advancing democratic values worldwide.
Program Short-Term Success:
Gaining the trust of important international world leaders and the entree which allows AJC to discuss critical topics such as: the looming threat to regional and global security posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions; the urgency of counterterrorism cooperation; the continued spread of anti-Semitism in many parts of the world; and Israel’s standing in the United Nations and her quest for security and peace.
Program Success Monitored by:
AJC's Office of Governmental and International Affairs
Program Success Examples:
UN reneging on the "Zionism is Racism" resolution
Program:
UN Watch
- Budget:
-
$1,400,927
- Category:
-
International, Foreign Affairs & National Security
- Population Served:
-
Adults
Program Description:
UN Watch evaluates and scrutinizes the United Nations, particularly in regards to human rights violations, in order to identify, expose and combat actions which are prejudicial toward Israel or the Jewish people.
Program Long-Term Success:
To reframe the international debate on human rights by calling attention to the genuine victims of human rights violations around the world who are systematically ignored by the U.N. Human Rights Council, as a result of its nearly exclusive focus on condemning Israel. In doing so, UN Watch exposes the hypocrisy and punctures the halo of U.N. institutions that apply such double standards.
Program Short-Term Success:
To use our unique position as a pro-Israel human rights organization situated at the center of the U.N. human rights system, and at the center of Europe, to generally advance the cause of defending Israel and the Jewish people, and to put their persecutors on the defensive.To use our unique position as a pro-Israel human rights organization situated at the center of the U.N. human rights system, and at the center of Europe, to generally advance the cause of defending Israel and the Jewish people, and to put their persecutors on the defensive.
Program Success Monitored by:
UN Watch annual evaluation review.
Program Success Examples:
UN Watch planned the battle against Durban II starting in 2007, two years before the conference opened. UN Watch designed and carried out a broad, complex and sustained campaign across the fields of diplomacy, media, and NGO advocacy, working in concert with friends and allies around the world. All of this culminated in the final week during which UN Watch held a barrage of mega-events—for which it brought in thousands from across Europe, and built multiple coalitions involving 100 different organizations—that seized the public space surrounding the conference, and captured international attention.
Program:
Latino and Latin American Institute
- Budget:
-
$385,480
- Category:
-
International, Foreign Affairs & National Security
- Population Served:
-
Adults
Program Description:
The Latino and Latin American Institute systematically builds and sustains relationships that help protect and strengthen Jewish communities in Latin America, secure support for Israel throughout the hemisphere, and foster favorable political alliances in the United States. To accomplish these goals, the Institute engages the Latino community in the United States and the governments of Latin America to address both their separate and intersecting issues, and to produce reciprocal appreciation for AJC’s concerns. This approach integrates the agency’s remarkable capacity to promote positive change at home and abroad through sophisticated interethnic and interreligious outreach and international diplomacy.
Program Long-Term Success:
AJC is the only organization that has established strategic, long-term relations with both the political and economic power bases in Latin America and among Latino elites in the U.S. Enhancing relationships with these critical cohorts in both Latin America and the U.S. is imperative to attain and cultivate support for Israel and America’s position on Israel.
Program Short-Term Success:
Advancing and supporting the well-being of Jewish communities in Latin America.
Program Success Monitored by:
AJC's executive staff
Program Success Examples:
(1) the Institute’s director testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs -- the sole voice on behalf the Jewish community -- that Iran's expanding ties to countries in the Western Hemisphere poses a threat to all nations in the region including the United States. In testimony before members of three House Foreign Affairs subcommittees, she explained that Venezuela is the gateway to heightened Iranian influence on other countries in Latin America.
(2) More than 30 AJC and Dominican-American top leaders met with H.E. Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, at AJC headquarters. AJC Executive Director David Harris expressed the organization’s appreciation for the excellent ties between the Dominican Republic, the United States, and Israel, and for the important role played by the Caribbean country in rescuing almost 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust. (President Fernandez had been in Israel in July 2009, accompanied by a delegation of 30 diplomats and businessmen, to discuss ways the two countries can increase trade and forge a strategic relationshithe Latino and Latin American Institute has worked with the American Dominican community and contacts in the Dominican Republic to expand and promote the conversation about increased trade with Israel. Most recently, the Institute has been working with its Dominican partners to bring aid to Haiti.