Dan David
Foundation

Following its announcement of Aug. 2, 2023, the Foundation allocated $1 million to support education programs and other activities run by civil society and non-governmental organizations that seek to promote democratic, liberal and secular values in Israel.

After careful consideration, the Foundation has distributed the funds among the following organizations and their respective projects:

·       Democracy - It's in Our Hands! is a new initiative by the Adam Institute to develop a volunteer-run training program aimed at protecting and enriching Israel's democracy.

·       The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has set up an initiative to counter the ongoing attacks on democracy and freedom within the Israeli education system.

·       Connecting for Impact is a new project of the National Council of Jewish Women, aimed at strengthening the Israeli feminist ecosystem by nurturing peer learning and collaborative leadership among feminist changemakers.

·       The Pumbi Civic Theatre is a new Jerusalem-based project dedicated to promoting liberal and democratic values among young audiences.

·       The Forum for Regional Thinking runs a program in Israeli high schools to strengthen democracy and address the inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and in the West Bank.

·       The Israeli Movement is creating a network of Neighborhood Councils aimed at empowering local communities to take ownership of their civil needs.

·       Qadayana is the new youth track of Qadaya, a leadership initiative to promote community responsibility and expand civic participation among Arab citizens in Israel, with the goal of advancing social and economic justice.

·       Israel Hofsheet, which promotes religious freedom and battles religious coercion, has launched a project to thwart attempts to introduce extremist agendas into educational institutions.

·       Tel Aviv Youth University is launching a series of Science and Society Exposure Days, which include a focus on democratic values, for high school students from Israel’s periphery.

·       Givat Haviva – which works to create a Jewish and Arab shared society anchored in principles of mutual respect, trust, pluralism and intrinsic equality between citizens – is running training programs for educators, and for facilitators in Jewish-Arab encounters.

·       The Secular Forum has established programs to combat religious indoctrination and discrimination against women in the army and in state-run schools.

·       Tzedek Centers, which work to create democratic infrastructure to empower local communities, have launched training programs in three cities for Russian-speaking Israelis.

·       Mifras, which encourages creativity and innovation in education, has launched an intensive program to help school principals promote democratic civic education.

·       Shabibat AJEEC is a youth movement run by AJEEC-NISPED, aimed at equipping young Bedouin Arabs with tools for self-development, leadership, social change and a sense of agency.

·       Part of the New Israel Fund, which supports a wide range of social justice causes, the Democracy Taskforce is a 100-member group of NGO staff and others working actively to fight anti-democratic trends in Israel.

·       Haredim La’Medina, which aims to introduce values of democracy, equality, justice and inclusivity to ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim), is launching a new program to offer democracy training to senior Haredi educators in Israel.

·       The Movement for Freedom of Information is establishing a new Active Citizenship program to equip law and communication students at Sapir Academic College with tools and knowledge to utilize the Freedom of Information Act.

·       Programs for Jewish and Arab teachers run by the Jerusalem-based peacebuilding organization, the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, aim to embed principles of inclusivity at all levels of the education system.

·         Hechalutz - Hamidrasha at Oranim, a leadership-building movement in the spirit of the chalutzim (Israeli pioneers), peaceful Zionism and humanistic secular Judaism, runs Seeds of Partnership, which invites young Jews and Arabs to work on mutual goals, and other programs for students.

·       BaShaar – Academic Community for Israeli Society aims to promote and foster academic and liberal values through a variety of channels including education outreach, position papers and a hotline for safeguarding academic freedom.

The Mobile Holocaust Museum - "Touching History" is an interactive travelling museum founded by Gidi Glazer that commemorates the Holocaust, its victims and survivors. The mission of the mobile museum is not only to fulfil the will of the Holocaust survivors and victims to "never forget", but also to ensure that today's youths are educated about this terrible chapter in human history.
 
The museum collects artifacts connected to the Holocaust that tell the stories of the lives of millions of Jews and tours high schools throughout Israel. Using a 'hands-on' approach, students can immerse themselves in these stories to understand what happened and history's impact on current events. Touching History has already reached 160,000 students. 

The Dan David Foundation supports the project Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Price, which aims to collect, edit (or re-edit) and write commentaries on all inscriptions in all languages from the period between the fourth century BCE to the seventh century CE found in Israel. Together with Tel Aviv University, some of Israel's finest scholars of the ancient world have been involved in the project since its inception, along with distinguished colleagues from abroad (mainly Germany). Four volumes have already been published since 2010, covering regions such as Jerusalem, the northern and southern coasts, and Judea/Idumaea, with the fifth volume on Galilee in preparation. Nearly 8,000 texts in ten languages will be published by the end of the project. The project is in line with the founders' interest and passion for research that sheds light on the past.

The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation connects the youth of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for cross-border and cultural exchanges, despite their perceived differences and fears. The Peres Center uses social networking platforms to provide a framework for shared learning and capacity building. With its program "YaLa Young Leaders: Citizen Journalism and New Media Activism", they aim to increase dialogue, empathy, mutual trust and confidence among youth in the MENA region through shared learning and perspective-sharing. By strengthening participants' capacities as citizen journalists, activists, storytellers and influencers, they aim to reach up to 210 direct beneficiaries through the program. Through six cycles of activities over three years on specific journalism topics, they will meet online for lectures by top journalists. Dan David was active in youth movements and as a photojournalist, and the Foundation is proud to support the YaLa program in memory of its founder.

Ruach Tzeira's goal is to develop a nationwide network of learning communities for highly motivated and talented high school students in the humanities in Israel. The network provides a foundation for improving the teaching of the humanities through joint ventures with local schools and teachers. Ruach Tzeira has already opened 5 sites, with 2 more in the pipeline, to achieve its vision of 500 participants within 5 years. 13 classes of 200 students are already benefiting from their project.The Dan David Foundation supports one of Ruach Tzeira’s centers in Jerusalem.

In 2023, the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv will host an exhibition entitled "Through a Different Lens: Women Photographers of the First Half of the 20th Century. The exhibition highlights the work of 20 European photographers between the two world wars and their influence on future generations. The humanistic values expressed in the work of these pioneering women were erased by the forces of history. Not only Nazism and war, but also their male counterparts led to their exclusion from the canon. With Europe once again at war and democratic values under attack, this exhibition seeks to retell history through a different lens. The Dan David Foundation, in memory of Dan David’s long career as a photographer and photojournalist, has decided to be one of the main sponsors of the exhibition.

The Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania is the only surviving Jewish monument on Crete, following the destruction of the island’s community in 1944.
The building goes back to the Venetian period and became a synagogue in the 17th century. After the Holocaust, it remained abandoned and desecrated for half a century until it was painstakingly restored and re-dedicated in the late 1990s.
The Dan David Foundation is proud to support the continued maintenance of this monument that stands as witness to 2,300 years of Jewish life on Crete.

The Lod Music program offers a musical education to talented youths in the low-income and underdeveloped central Israeli town of Lod. Run jointly with the Lod Foundation, the program provides 30 three-year scholarships to local schoolchildren for musical training in jazz and light music.

The program includes five weekly hours of private instrumental lessons for each student, theory and ensemble sessions conducted by top teachers. The students receive professional training and continuous supervision, and perform at local events.

First Steps is a competition for small and medium-sized businesses in Jerusalem that supports young entrepreneurs wishing to open or develop their venture in the Israeli capital. While Israel has a well-established pipeline for funding high-tech startups, entrepreneurs wishing to invest in more traditional ventures often struggle to secure initial capital, particularly if they are young and can offer few financial guarantees.

Run jointly with the Jerusalem Foundation and the Mati Jerusalem Business Center, the First Steps competition provides winners with a no-interest, no-guarantee loan as well as expert support in drawing up a business plan and launching a successful commercial enterprise.

The competition focuses on creative business ideas with positive social impact, which have the potential to create jobs in Jerusalem. The project is inspired by Dan David’s personal history, as he faced very similar challenges at the start of his business career, which he was able to jumpstart thanks to a no-guarantee loan by a fellow entrepreneur who believed in his dream.

The Dan David Foundation provides a number of grants supporting the humanities and social sciences at Tel Aviv University. These include:

• Support for the establishment of a practical studies track in journalism at Tel Aviv University’s School of Communication.
• Grants for research in Biblical Archaeology under the supervision of Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University. Projects include excavations at Megiddo, the study and interpretation of First Temple epigraphy and the study of the origins and context of Biblical texts.
• Grants awarded through the School of History at Tel Aviv University to support postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and conferences.

Inaugurated in 1996, the Dan David building at Tel Aviv University was built to provide the university with additional classroom space as it faced a major increase in enrollments, following the mass immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. Today, the Dan David building continues to play a central role in campus life and is fondly remembered by university alumni from all faculties.

In 2022 the Foundation and Tel Aviv University initiated a major refurbishment of the building to renovate its interior and introduce smart classrooms that will ensure the best and most advanced teaching methods can be used by lecturers of all faculties.

Opened in 2018, the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Bio-History Research – part of the Natural History Museum at Tel Aviv University – hosts one of the most important anthropological collections in the world. It records the evolution of humans in the Middle East from 1.5 million years ago to the present, and holds artifacts not found anywhere else in the world, including the remains of the first modern humans out of Africa.

The Center aims to become a global focal point for research into human evolution by using advanced methods of scientific inquiry such as ancient DNA analysis and micro-CT scanning. It also hosts a cutting edge exhibition titled “What makes us human?” that tells the evolutionary story of our species to the broader public using innovative and interactive displays aimed at both children and adults.
 

The Dan David Foundation also sponsors multiple archaeological digs at prehistoric sites across Israel, such as the Misliya and Manot caves, which have been the sources of recent major discoveries illuminating the origin of our species’ first forays out of Africa.
 

The Name Your Hero Competition for Israeli high school students is an essay contest linked to the Dan David Prize. Run in conjunction with Tel Aviv University’s Youth University unit, the project encourages high school students to write about a personality who represents a role model for them and inspires them to make a difference through their own future actions. The best essays are rewarded with a small scholarship.