Changemaking in Israel

Changemaking in Israel, based on the example of Social Rights Centers designed to help local residents advocate for their rights and promote state and municipal solutions in the areas of health, welfare, education, housing, public transportation and more.

Additionally, the Centers help to encourage students of the Sapir College to work together with the residents of Sderot and Ofakim and to organize active communities and together analyze problems that the inhabitants are facing, in order to formulate effective strategies and action plans for improvement.

Sapir College is the oldest college in Israel. It is deeply engaged in social entrepreneurship, creating social innovations and encouraging its students to become future leaders, take initiative in their own hands and make a positive difference in the world. Due to unique location of its campus in the Western Negev, less than a mile away from the Gaza border, Sapir College provides education to a hugely diverse group of students, who seek innovative solutions to meet the challenges of the contemporary rapidly changing world.

Ruth Eitan, Ph.D. – is a professor of German History specializing in German Nationalism of the 18th century.  She has been teaching at higher education institutions since 1994, including Ben-Gurion University, where she was responsible for the implementation and promotion of external programs for the security personnel and held the post of General Manager of the Institute of German Studies. She moved to Sapir College in 2003, where she teaches and holds a post of Director of the Foreign Affairs Unit. She is also a Liaison for the Israeli Defense Forces and the Board of Trustees. Since 2007, she has held the post of Head of Sapir's fundraising and bilateral academic exchanges. Since 2013, she has been responsible for Erasmus Mobility programs at Sapir College.

From 2009 to 2015 she was Board Member of the German-Israeli Future Forum (DIZF).

Her main responsibilities include Capital Projects, enabling internationalization of Sapir College by endorsing bilateral exchange programs and introducing the College to new enterprises and entrepreneurship programs. She is also involved in the Vision for French Israeli relation initiative that puts emphasis on promoting joint projects against xenophobia and the new antisemitism by using state of the art technological matrix and providing creative and out of the box thinking methods to confront these themes.