Alumni Monthly Fund

Thank you to our alumni. Your support through the Alumni Monthly Fund has made it possible for us to continue offering groundbreaking programming at Achvat Amim. Your support is a testament to Achvat's impact long after the program ends. We are so grateful to each of you who continues to invest in this network, and make participation possible for future participants.

The true cost of Achvat is over $13,000 per participant, but we work hard to raise funds to supplement tuition, help applicants fundraise, and ensure program is as accessible as possible. We do this because we know what this program offers: a political home, a life-changing experience, and the tools to engage in principled, effective solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis building co-resistance against the occupation. And we know that many of you, our alumni, continue this work in powerful ways across the globe, as educators, organizers, journalists, rabbis, and community leaders.

You are the reason we can continue. Your monthly donations help us build momentum across generations of participants. Thank you for showing up - not just once, but again and again - for the vision we’re building together.

This month, we're working to grow our alumni contributions so we can welcome more participants into this work at a time when it's more urgent than ever. If you're passionate about Achvat Amim programming, consider sending this alumni fund to your cohort members or family who want to support meaningful, on-the-ground movement building.

This past week, 10 participants from across the UK and USA to join us on the ground.

Here's what one incoming participant has to say:

While I have been involved in peace work for the entirety of my adult life, this past year has strengthened my conviction and my dedication towards this work more than any other. I have watched my friends grieve and be isolated from Jewish community. I have also been personally targeted and had my employment threatened for publicly supporting a ceasefire and peace. While these experiences are painful, they have pushed me to take greater strides in my pursuit of justice. For this reason, I applied to Achvat Amim, not only to be part of this amazing program for four months, but also to explore the possibility of remaining in the land. As an educator, activist, and organizer, I believe that Achvat Amim would give me the invaluable experience and community support to help me develop my skills as an advocate and leader.

Your support has helped us welcome 46 participants over the past year who are busy supporting co-resistance projects on the ground and leading educational work across the diaspora.

Co-resistance projects led by Palestinians and Israelis face growing repression. At the same time, Jewish activists worldwide are seeking meaningful ways to engage through education and solidarity. Amid rising polarization in Jewish communities and anti-war movements, there's an urgent need to equip these activists with tools to show up in principled, informed ways - grounded in relationships with those directly impacted and committed to justice for all peoples. Here at Achvat Amim, that's what we continue to do, even when it gets difficult.

This summer brought with it unbearable violence - faced with impossible choices and closed airspaces - we were forced to cancel the Summer Program. In spite of all the careful planning in the world, war and occupation will always force us to pivot our work.

So we pivoted.

We made a promise to stand alongside our partners in Masafer Yatta, and when our cohort couldn't join us, we ran English language workshops for children in Umm al Kheir and enlisted our community of alumni and others to join.

The most urgent demand from communities in Masafer Yatta is to support sumud by joining them on the ground.  When you step into these relationships, you can no longer watch displacements as if they're happening far away from you, separated by screens, walls, language, and distance. You take it on as your own struggle, happening to your friends and kin less than an hour away, to a place that's welcomed you like home. 

“International support is one of the most important factors helping these endangered communities stay put. English classes in the South Hebron Hills aren’t a cute co-existence effort - they’re a crucial way to help the youth of the community share their struggle with the world" - Eliana P

We don't deny the grief that solidarity carries, but we won't stop committing to partnership and the struggle to end the occupation. We still find each other, carry each other forward, from Umm al Kheir, to Jerusalem, to New York.

We will continue to work towards the vision people like Awdah Hathaleen believe in: Freedom and abundance for his children. Land unmarred by checkpoints and soldiers and endless degradation and dehumanization. And solidarity that has constant love and life is poured into it.

We're excited to announce that Becca Strober, our cherished friend, mentor, and long-time Oversight Committee member, is joining us as Interim Executive Director. For over a decade Becca has been a community organizer, educator, and political strategist, working with organizations like Breaking the Silence, Sadaka Reut, Gisha, ORAM, and Mahapach-Taghir, combining community building, accessible learning, and anti-occupation activism. This work is a lighthouse to the organizing we strengthen through our volunteer placements, learning days, and solidarity work, and the connections we build across our movement, so we're incredibly grateful for Becca to be joining us, and for their expertise and vision to strengthen this work. Becca is also the co-founder of our sister organization Midreshet Dror.

Your support makes it possible for us to adapt, grow, and continue offering accessible, justice-driven programming in a moment that calls for nothing less. Thank you for your commitment to this work. It means the world.

Each Passover, we gather around the seder table. With the Hagaddah sitting in front of us, we find ourselves with more questions than answers. The story of Passover orients us towards redemption and liberation, and anchors us in the arc of Jewish history and its cycles.

The period we find ourselves in now leading up to Shavuot, known as Counting of the Omer, is about breathing life into the lessons of Passover, taking them off the Seder plate and putting them into practice in our lives. For us at Achvat Amim, it's about enacting those commitments to education, growth, justice, and community.

Passover, and Counting the Omer, remind us why asking questions is so important. At Achvat Amim, we explore what Home/Land, People/Hood, and Self/Determination means - and like the Hagaddah, we don’t exactly provide an answer. Instead, over weeks of workshops, trips, Beit Midrash, volunteer placements, Hebrew and Arabic education, and more, participants find their place in community, solidarity, education, while understanding - the many ways we go about understanding home/land, people/hood, and self/determination, and the way we commit ourselves to growing and asking questions - that creates the foundation on which we can build genuine relations of solidarity and commit to self-determination for all peoples in the place they call home.

This past year, your support made Achvat Amim a reality. In 2024, your donations provided 32 participants with one-of-a-kind experiences. Tours of Lifta with Zochrot, Work Days in Masafer Yatta, Ruchani Study with Dr Shaiya Rothberg, Educational Trips to Battir, and more.

Our South Trip included visits to Sderot, Rahat, Beer Sheva, and Umm al Kheir. We opened up questions and conversations like - what is Center and Periphery? How do borders, citizenship, law, and politics affect Bedouin communities, from Rahat, to Unrecognized Villages, to Umm al Kheir? How has the history of Mizrahi migration and settlement around the Otef been marginalized and narrated, and what does that teach us about where we are today? How are we able to hold these painful, and for many, highly personal stories, and build an understanding community that can support each other?

This Spring Cohort joins 12 Participants from Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Israel, the United States, and Canada.

Our Immersive Participants are currently fulfilling volunteer placements with ALLMEP, the Storytelling Project, and Rabbis For Human Rights. We're super proud to say that all of our participants have since joined protective presence and shepherd accompaniment in the West Bank, in addition to community building activities like movie nights, protesting, food packing with Culture of Solidarity food drives, and more!

With 20 applications in for our Summer Solidarity Intensive a few weeks before the application deadline, there is more interest in Achvat Amim Programming than ever. 2024 was a challenging year to plan programming - flight cancellations, daily sirens, high security risks, and the pain and shock of the war meant otherwise interested applicants were unable to join solidarity on the ground. 

You, our alumni, and our participants who continue to join us reminded us that solidarity and education do not take breaks, and amidst the pain and violence, Achvat Amim has been able to provide a community that still builds a reality beyond war, militarization, borders, and occupation.

The biggest barrier to applicants is financial. Hopeful applicants from all over the United States, Turkey, South Africa, Hungary and more, are eager to take part in Achvat Amim's one of a kind programming. As much as we are committed to supporting their financing journey, we need our community to support this fund to build the scholarship pool that makes programming accessible and sustainable.

As alumni, you pay forward the gift of education with your monthly donations. Please consider taking your donation a step further, and sharing this campaign with your family and friends, to grow our monthly fund!

Looking at testimonials from our Winter Program, here's what some participants had to say:

"The program made it possible to build trust with individuals and have tough conversations more quickly. The facilitation, peer authenticity, and generosity, was unparalleled. It also brought many folks who I have not actually heard from on past trips before, like Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even on “progressive” trips where they may have been mentioned but were not invited to the conversation. Here, we actually got to meet, sit down, talk, and build a relationship."

"I really appreciated that we were given space to think freely. It didn't feel like propaganda or indoctrination, just exposure to ideas and people and freedom to make meaning of it for ourselves. Achvat Amim is a a chance to connect and learn with Jews from around the United States and the world who are wrestling with the same big questions about Israel, Palestine, Peace, Justice and Hope. The cohort based experience creates a safe community to challenge yourself, question your assumptions, and take concrete collective action toward a more hopeful future for everyone who calls the land home."

"First program that I’ve done that had a focus on the Occupation, and had a space for criticism of the Israeli state. I loved being welcomed into the activist scene, being able to meet people in this work, being able to sit down for dinner together or celebrate Christmakkah, and especially Shabbat meals. I thought that both the educational and volunteering components were done extraordinarily well, and the program exceeded my expectations."

Winter Program alumni are doing amazing things - organizing events with JStreet Brown, Let's Complicate, and more, showing us the longterm impact programming has on leadership and community building. Solidarity goes far beyond the end of the program.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for making spaces like these possible. They are the foundation on which we build a better world, together. As alumni, thank you for what you do to commit to activism wherever you are. From organizing events, to writing and art, to supporting your communities and continuing to support our program, we are grateful for your hearts and actions.

As always, we depend on your support to make programming accessible. Please continue to share this campaign with your friends, family, and cohort, so we can grow the scholarship pool for aspiring Achvat Amim participants.

Thank you for all that you do! Yours in solidarity,

Achvat Amim