Home for Grassroot Initiatives Across The Middle East Region
Our Roots
We are a group of young social activists and entrepreneurs from Israel/Palestine and across the Middle East who are passionate to transform the region to become a better home for us all.
Separately, we have been through years of grassroots intercultural and cross-border work, motivated by our vision for our region. We have worked in art, activism, education, academics, and public relations. In our paths, we have learned how challenging, how isolating, and discouraging this work can be.
Through this community, we harnessed our decades of experience and came together to support new initiatives and projects brought to us by peers and younger generations of changemakers.
Our Objectives
In the upcoming years we aim to:
Support and Mentor Change Makers from across the region
Promote regional collaboration, connectivity, and solidarity
Promote Cultural and Cross-Cultural interactions idea sharing
Inspire towards a more sustainable future
Whose Involved
The co-founding group gathers decades of involvement in various fields with direct experience working for leading organizations as Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, The Midburn Community, Yala Young Leaders, The Parents Circle, IPCRI and more.
Sulaiman Khatib
Co-founder and former Director of Combatants for Peace, a non-profit Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilding organization whose founders are ex-Israeli soldiers and ex-Palestinian prisoners who decided to join hands in non-violent resistance as a means to end the occupation, and bring equality, freedom, and peace to both peoples.
Sulaiman just publish his book “In This Place Together”
Yahav Erez
Founder of the Israel chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and of Toda'a Raba, the first Psychedelic Podcast in Hebrew. A former Community Manager of Koolulam, a social musical initiative centered around mass singing events in an effort to unite people around music.
Achiya Schatz
34 years old, born and raised in Nataf, a Zionist-Religious community. His family has fled from Natzi Germany. Achiya served between 2005 and 2008 as a soldier and commander in "Duvdevan", an elite unit of the IDF, and attained the rank of staff sergeant. acquired a B.A. in Politics and Government studies from Ben-Gurion University. Achiya worked as the Communications Director at Breaking the Silence and for the past 5 years has led the organization's strategy and campaigns unit.
Sarah Benazera
Sarah is a peace activist, storyteller, and dialogue facilitator. After studying at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in 2007 she decided to make cross-cultural dialogue and peace-work her career. Since then she has been working with youth and adults in the peace-building and education field in Israel and Palestine. Sarah worked as a project manager and blog editor at YaLa Young Leaders for 5 years, developing and running a citizen journalism program that trained over 2,000 young people from all around the MENA region. She has been involved in multiple Peace and Cooperation projects, organizing conferences, working as a dialogue facilitator, and training peace program counselors.
Sharon Avraham
Sharon has led several grassroots social initiatives, including Project Midburn—a regional Burning Man communal event in Israel—leading the initiative from its first steps, as well as co-founding an interdisciplinary collective of artists, designers, and engineers who create art installations and cultural events around the world.
Additionally, for the last 7 years, Sharon has been leading a community lab project at his ranch in a small village, building a space to research community-building tools, sustainability, and self-governance.
Katie Wachsberger
Graduated summa cum laude with a BA from Columbia University in Middle East Studies, Katie’s thesis focused on academic trends in the Arab world. She completed her MA at Ben Gurion University where her research examined movements of reform and critique in the Gulf, focusing on Oman and the UAE.
Katie Wachsberger is a co-founder of DANA, an Abu Dhabi-based accelerator for women-led startups in desert tech, including the sectors of agritech, food tech, water solutions, renewable energy, and waste management, focused on scaling sustainable solutions in the GCC, Egypt, and India. DANA offers startups access to mentorship, business model construction, POC at DANA beta sites and with corporate design partners, AI implementation with Microsoft, and seed funding. With a background in academia and journalism, Katie spent several years conducting research in the GCC on cross-border environmental innovation initiatives.
Liel Maghen
Through working in group facilitation, community organizing, mobilization, and social entrepreneurship across the region, Liel aims to contribute to a future where people are more empowered, have self-agency, and are free from every system of oppression. Liel holds a MA degree in International Development and a B.An in Middle Eastern studies, both acquired in Jerusalem. Liel has recently co-formed the Lighthouse, a community house for S.W.A.N.A. residents and affiliates to retreat, reenergize, regroup, and create.
Rina Kedem
Rina Kedem is an environmental peacebuilder and entrepreneur who develops and directs cooperation projects with Palestinians, Israelis, and Jordanians for the past 16 years. Her work is guided by a wholesome perspective including social-economic and environmental well-being of communities, and tangible, hands-on and long-term peace-building opportunities. Her work is supported by international and national conflict mitigation and development agencies as well as government ministries.
Amer Dajani
An entrepreneur who is passionate about creating his lifelong project in the service of communities.
The Sukoon project is an environmental retreat center in the heart of a Palestinian agricultural village Al-Auja, while co-creating with the environment and community surrounding it, offering a new perspective of a more sustainable environmental lifestyle and a stress-less approach to life on this land.
By combining food forest, creative mud constructions, holistic livestock, and open spaces for visitors, Sukoon doesn’t only provide the space but the education of sustainably, respecting nature and the impact of human actions upon other species.
Ramzi el Spinoza
DJ, actor, producer, and artistic director. Ramzy grew up in a religious Jewish family originally from Aleppo, Syria. Raised in a Jewish-Arabic culture, his connection to Arab music is deep-rooted, natural and led him to create a series of cultural events by the name of Monolingual, which exposes & provides a stage for Arab MCs, hip hop artists from East Jerusalem, and the Westbank, and engages a diverse audience.