Together We Stand

[ 80 ] challenges far beyond disaster response. Resilience is closely connected to the ability to absorb capacity-building for community development, and an important aspect of achieving long-term, broad-based sustainable development. As a member of the family of nations, the State of Israel through MASHAV — Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, shares the global responsibility of striving to achieve worldwide sustainable development and social equity, with a strong emphasis on leaving no one behind, while fortifying resilience. David Ben-Gurion, the founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, once said: “The principles of mutual assistance and equality should also constitute the basis for interna- tional relations between people... [and] must be based on the solidarity of all human beings, derived from fraternity and mutual assistance in every sphere of life.” By placing people at the heart of development, MASHAV views it as its mission to lead efforts to empower those living in poverty to improve their own lives. We are strengthening our commitment to continue our efforts to develop inno- vative and affordable technologies and solutions, and to share our knowledge and experience to inspire and support fellow nations and communities in their struggle to achieve sustainable development and social equity. Based on the Jewish sociophilosophical principle of Tikun Olam (repair- ing the world), the guiding spirit behind MASHAV in its development work is a profound belief in our ability and our duty to share our accumulated knowledge and experi- ence for the improvement and betterment of others. We in Israel are very familiar with the challenges of development, as we ourselves made the transition from a developing country into a modern success story. Established in 1958, only a decade after Israel’s own independence, MASHAV is one of the oldest international development cooperation agencies in the world. In our experience, solutions to development challenges lie in the human resource. This is one of the main reasons why we focus our many activities on human capacity- building. Since the establishment of MASHAV, more than 280,000 professionals from over 130 countries around the world have participated in our professional programmes. Our main areas of expertise are closely interconnected, and include food security and agriculture; education; medicine and public health; community development; innovation and entrepreneurship for development; gender equality and women’s empowerment; regional planning and rural and urban development; research and develop- ment; emergency planning and response; and humanitarian aid. Within this holistic framework, community resilience, in the context of the ‘magical combination’ of food security, water security and health security, presents a unique blend of preparedness and emergency management, public health Fully-equipped emergency mobile medical clinics were shipped from Israel to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to help combat the spread of Ebola Image: Courtesy of MASHAV T ogether W e S tand