*Please note our Funding Circles review proposals by Invitation Only*
Our Mission
Our mission is to support a nonviolent transformation of the conflict and conditions in Palestine and Israel into an enduring peace with full civil rights, dignity and security for all. The US government is cutting back on such efforts, and Threshold can play a significant part in supporting the transformation.
We support adversaries with decades of wounds inflicted on each other and manipulated by outside interests advancing their own agendas that elevate one side of the conflict while dismissing and demonizing the other, to transform practices on all levels of society to create conditions conducive to Palestinians and Israelis flourishing. We nurture an ecosystem of peaceful, visionary, innovative Palestinian and Israeli activists.
We fund initiatives that realize the lives of Palestinians and Israelis are entwined and work to either address the asymmetry of resources between the societies or to collectively build relationships, community, and practices. Our goal is for Palestinians and Israelis to perceive each other as neighbors and allies, and not as existential threats to each other's cultures and communities, and to create a region where everyone enjoys freedom, security, dignity and opportunity.
We are looking for and engaging with the leverage points within a system that hold the potential for interventions that might transform perspectives, possibility and practices mobilizing civil society in systemic change.
Our Strategy and Focus
We support a nonviolent transformation of the conflict in Palestine and Israel into an enduring peace with full civil rights, dignity, opportunity and security for all. We support adversaries with decades of wounds inflicted on each other, that have led each side to dismiss and demonize the other, to transform practices on all levels of society so that each people see the other as neighbors and allies, and not as existential threats to their cultures and communities.
Grant Cycle Guidelines:
1
We are focused on a conflict that is fixed in a specific region of the Middle East but has significance beyond its defined geographic area. As our name suggests the Middle East Peace Funding Circle attends to dynamics in Palestine and Israel. Efforts and impact in this region hold potential as models for other conflicts.
2
3
We prefer diversity and consider it, but do not have articulated criteria. Interestingly, most of our grantees have women and men in leadership and/or on the Board, and include Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
4
We do work to influence paradigms and practices in civil society that we expect will eventually influence policy and advocacy. Part of our strategy in funding Encounter Programs is that it will lead to influential stakeholder in the American Jewish leadership will be mobilized and to impact advocacy and policy.