Living Together
Israeli society will value its social, cultural, and religious diversity and view it as an asset. It will act based on broad foundations and mutual responsibility, and accept and respect all parts of society.
This project is based on two fundamental principles:
Theory based on fieldwork: We combine our knowledge and experience with that of our partners to create unique added value.
Diversity as an asset: The ideal of culture being an asset and identity being knowledge is applied in all our programs and partnerships.
About
Israeli society has a genuine need for mechanisms and opportunities for shaping solid agreements with the actual people, institutes, and communities that contend with the issues and challenges related to living in a multi-cultural environment. Due to long-existing social, cultural, and economic processes, most communities live separately, educate their children separately, and consume different media channels and culture. Society struggles to create community ties and agreements between communities and cultures, and to maintain the balance between allowing each group to flourish as a community with unique cultural assets, and formulating an identity shared by them all.
Living Together strives to develop a new type of social partnership in Israel. It collaborates with a wide range of organizations and public platforms to pursue our ability to thrive together as a diverse community and appreciate the value of such diversity. Our main strategy is to develop partnerships in which our perception, principles, and tools can be implemented in different ways, as we connect to the real people who are overcoming life’s challenges together.
We believe in impacting existing systems through in-depth organizational process and training change agents. Living Together strives to provide practical knowledge, tools, and capabilities for living together in the school system, public, private and academic institutions, communities, municipalities, social organizations, and social media. We have gained significant knowledge and experience during the years we have spent addressing the challenges posed by living together in a joint society.
Activities
- Developing and implementing processes that can help us all live together Creating unique content and language; training; and providing practical tools for working with each individual organization, community, institute, or authority.
- Making it happen – learning and working together Creating learning spaces, volunteer programs, and methods that can help implement the processes developed by Living Together in organizations, in the form of on-job training (OJT).
- Principles of Living Together Offering workshops in which participants can learn and experience the principles of Living Together and how to use its tool kit when working in diverse organizations, communities, or institutes, or with groups with cultural diversity.
- Expanding our impact Training agents of change from different backgrounds and in different positions. This process includes gaining an in-depth understanding of the process, learning the principles of the Living Together Center, contending with challenges and conflicts, and developing creative initiatives for resolving them.
- Diagnosis Identifying the needs, strengths, organizational infrastructure, identities, stakeholders, and challenges within the multi-cultural context of the specific organization, and helping it develop a work plan.
- Social media To a great extent, relationships and interactions between groups have shifted from physical spaces to digital ones. The Talking Differently initiative develops and provides tools for moderating social media groups with diverse members and encouraging initiatives on social media that can give voice to different groups, encourage others to get to know them, and tell the unique Israeli story.
