Nadia Harhash, 36, an activist turned project coordinator at the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, says SHATIL’s Community Organizing Training Program (COTP) has changed the way she approaches her grass roots empowerment and leadership work.

“I learned to stop working spontaneously and start working in a more structured, methodical and thoughtful way,” Nadia says. “Thanks to the course, I’m working more professionally. I’ve learned to examine the consequences of potential actions….I don’t want to just help people. I want to help them to help themselves, to discover where their power is. The course has taught me to create better boundaries – for my health and for the health of the group. It’s a slower, stronger, more solid process that opens up more horizons.”

In addition to the third cycle of COTP, SHATIL ran dozens of courses this past winter. Among the new offerings was a course in financial management for non-profits, an area that is becoming increasingly important to the professionalization of NGOs and to funding bodies. The course launched SHATIL’s activities in this area, which followed an organizational needs assessment conducted on a volunteer basis by Canadian businesswoman Leslie Ram in conjunction with SHATIL fundraising consultant Liora Asa.

The new Coalition for Public Health Director, Yizhar Reshef, says he learned for the first time to create an organizational budget that is both appropriate for funders and true to his organization’s aims, as well as how to maximize the use of funds for social concerns. Yizhar also says he acquired constructive tools in SHATIL’s New Tactics: Social and Environmental Activists’ course that help him build the Coalition’s collaborations with the Ministry of Health. “The course taught me that we have to move from a stance of criticism and attack to one of cooperation. It strengthened me and helped turn intuition into practice,” says Yizhar.

In dozens of other courses, hundreds of activists learned how to monitor and follow up on government decisions, become social entrepreneurs, advocate for the disabled, influence economic decision makers, use the media to advance social change and much more.