About Us

The Trust is an indegenous developmental agency established in 1984 in Jerusalem and registered in Israel as a non-profit NGO to empower members of the Palestinian community through education and leadership developmental programs targeting Palestinians every where.

The Trust has built up a range of effective programs involving and benefiting children, young women and mothers living in marginalized situations aiming at transforming the sense of hopelessness and dependency into individual and collective feeling of hope and capabilities.

Our work is known to be holistic, integrative and inclusive constantly developing to meet the local needs of our target groups; ranging from service delivery to raising awareness and community empowerment. We work in partnership with the local community, who are the front-liners in our work, building on the local capacities, on their resilience and power to change.

Although our main office is situated in Jerusalem yet our programs reach and serve the marginalized groups in several areas in Israel and in the West Bank namely in the villages North West Jerusalem, the Shufat Refugee Camp, Lod, Ramla and Rahat where our programs were focused in each of these areas to reach the family as a whole unit.

Our Vision:

We envision a society where social justice and human dignity is achieved within the Palestinian community.

Our Mission:

To contribute in improving the quality of life of the marginalized individuals and families within the Palestinian community through our different and diversified programs that enhance social awareness and community involvement.

Our Goals:

• Contribute in the maintenance and development of Palestinian identity.
• Enhance and facilitate the families’ functional role as a whole unit.
• To promote social awareness and rights among women to become aware and engaged on the family and community levels.
• Provide a supporting environment for children ;
• Networking with local organizations that share our values

The Trust leads different and diversified programs:

• The Mother-to-Mother Program: the program supports and strengthens the parenting skills and social awareness of mothers (and fathers), by training a group of mothers to become paraprofessionals and counsel other mothers from their neighborhood, individually and collectively, to be effective members of society at both the family and community levels.

• The Young Women Empowerment and Prevention of Early Marriage Program: education is the instrument used to foster the development of positive personalities, self-awareness and self-confidence among school girls and young women as well as to reverse the trend of early marriages by raising family and social awareness about the (negative) consequences of such social practices. The program also gives young women who dropped-out of school an opportunity to resume and continue with their education.

• The Learn-by-Play Program: The program aims at limiting illiteracy and decreasing the drop-out rate from schools by operating on three levels: parents, school teachers and young volunteers with the child as the center of the activity, working in small groups of elementary pupils mainly the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade to build up the basic acquired skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic through work papers and didactical activities. Under the program, young volunteers are trained to be mentors of children with learning difficulties.

• The Combating Domestic Violence Program: The program aims at limiting and decreasing family violence through constructive communication and relationship at the family and the community level and raising public awareness on the rights of women and children and the social dangers of domestic violence. Our family counselling centre was established in Biddo seeking to equip couples with necessary skills, values and technical know-how to face the challenges of family violence as well as to resolve conflicts peacefully.

• The Community based preschool education program aims at developing the preschools as a whole unit of intervention and developing the teachers’ inborn potential to interact with the children following the life-oriented approach in a safe and supportive environment.

• The Trust’s CTRD “Center for Training, Research and Development” which seeks to contribute to early childhood, family and community education by conducting action research, feasibility and planning studies, program evaluation and training.

Future Prospective:

All our programs emerged out of the local needs and are therefore tailored to address the diverse and practical needs of the local community. Although the programs are intended to benefit the entire family, yet women and children are particularly targeted because they are more vulnerable and they are the primary agents to social change. Therefore, we will continue to innovate and consolidate our programs, investing in local capacities and enriching our staff achieve best impact within the target areas.

We will also continue to network with the local organizations in order to enhance effective community empowerment as well as the sustainability of our programs. We will provide necessary counselling and initial training for project development, thereafter, the communities are encouraged to be actively involved and to take primary responsibility in program implementation with support and assistance from the Trust’s professional staff.