Empowering Social Change
NIF works to reduce social and economic gaps as a means of safeguarding democracy and building a cohesive society.
The Israeli public is more united behind the desire for social and economic justice than on any other single issue. With 1 in 3 Israeli children living below the poverty line it’s not hard to figure out why.
Our aim is to speed the inclusion of Israel’s diverse national, gender, ethnic and geographic population groups into an increasingly unequal economy, allowing for social mobility and for stronger civic and political engagement. Specifically, our work focuses on some of the most critical root causes of socio-economic gaps: the lack of housing options, growing poverty and “built-in” inequality at the local and community level.
Working across party lines in the Knesset, our intense efforts helped put the issue of public housing on the national agenda more forcefully than ever before. We believe that housing is an issue that crosses ideological and sector lines, and that it’s possible to build a majority of political support.
The poverty issue also crosses sectorial lines and is high on many politicians’ agenda. Despite budget shortfalls, the political will to address the issue is strong among the centrist and religious parties, and shrewd coalition-building could further progress under any governing coalition.
Untangling Israel’s administrative boundaries and tax jurisdictions is hard and abstruse work – but the activists for distributive justice know that it is a key factor in improving opportunity in marginalized communities.