Friends of the Arava Institute

Friends of the Arava Institute supports the Arava Institute's research, academic and environmental cooperation efforts. The Arava Institute aims to advance cross-border environmental cooperation in the face of political conflict, to ensure that the shared environmental resources of the region will be protected from further degradation and loss, that scarce environmental resources will no longer be a source of conflict, and that environmental cooperation will become a model for cross-border cooperation in all other areas of the conflict.

Friends of the Arava Institute supports the Arava Institute through public information efforts, fundraising for the Arava Institute's work, and recruitment for the academic program. The Arava Institute employs three main strategies to advance cross-border environmental cooperation. The first strategy is to create a cadre of future leaders for the region through our academic program. The academic program brings Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian students together to learn about their shared environment and the need for cooperation, and to build leadership skills, which include respectful dialogue and empathetic listening. The second strategy is to research, design, and implement technologies that can improve lives and build trust and goodwill, such as wastewater reuse systems and renewable energy solutions. Our researchers and faculty work with off-grid villages and vulnerable populations to improve their quality of life. The third strategy is to build partnerships and relationships with like-minded individuals and organizations across borders in the process of implementing small-scale replicable projects that prove that peaceful cooperation is possible, and lay the groundwork for future larger-scale projects.

Friends of the Arava Institute brings Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian alumni to the United States to meet with interested community leaders, students and others around the country to learn about the Institute. We bring Institute faculty and staff to the United States to build support for the Institute. As part of this we have a strategic fundraising partnership with the Jewish National Fund to engage supporters throughout the country.

As the Arava Institute has grown over the past 25 years, we have expanded our scope, and many ideas that were only aspirational for years have become a reality. Our capability to educate and train a cadre of future leaders has grown as our academic program has become more well known, allowing us to be highly selective in accepting only the best and brightest candidates. Our capability to research and implement sustainable technologies has grown as our faculty gain more experience in their fields and hone their research focuses. Lastly, our capability to build partnerships and relationships with other organizations in the pursuit of peace has exploded with the birth of our Track II Environmental Forum five years ago. As Track II gained momentum and the Arava Institute grew from a purely academic institution into an activist organization, we have invested heavily in improving our capabilities in this area, including staff capacity. We manage multiple projects per year and dozens of partner relationships.

We have built a network of more than 1,400 Arava Institute alumni who have gone on to become scientists, entrepreneurs, activists, politicians, conservationists, founders of NGOs, and more, who bring the lens of the Arava Institute's goal of advancing cross-border environmental cooperation to everything they do. We have accomplished internationally-renowned scientific feats, such as germinating 2,000-year-old seeds and reanimating an ancient species of native Judean date palm. Our research teams have improved the lives of Bedouin villagers by installing wastewater reuse systems that grow agricultural outcomes. We have built relationships with more than 100 partners through our Track II Environmental Forum and have completed several projects in the Gaza Strip to improve access to clean drinking water. What we are looking forward to accomplishing is establishing a Regional Center for Climate Change Adaptation, a vision we are working to bring to life now, that will coordinate and inform governmental responses to climate change for the countries of the region.