Dafna Israeli Fund
Member Profile
The Dafna Fund is Israel’s only women’s foundation and is working to promote women as effective agents of change, so that they, in turn, will transform Israeli society as a whole.
The central paradigm of the Dafna Fund is both powerful and empowering. Uniquely positioned as Israel’s only women’s foundation, the Dafna Fund provides seed funding and ongoing support to programs and partnerships that encourage new and innovative approaches, both practical and conceptual, to promoting women leadership in all spheres of life. By identifying specific needs and challenges faced by women, the Dafna Fund has impact not only on individuals, organizations and institutions, but on Israeli society overall.
The vision of the Dafna Fund is to take women’s leadership and engagement to the next level. Through the contributions of diverse communities of empowered Israeli women – students, new immigrants, single mothers and family breadwinners, businesswomen, civil servants and scholars, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze – the wider society will be enriched.
The Dafna Fund is governed today by a cooperative board of Israeli, American and Canadian women. The fund recognizes and rewards innovation, excellence, social commitment, and collaborative synergies between different groups of women. Working in close collaboration with its grantees, it offers them consulting, capacity-building and group workshops and training.
The Dafna Fund, which also provides one-time gifts to coalitions and collaborative efforts, works with diverse communities through sustained engagement:
- Introducing a new model of women’s mentoring to Orthodox Jewish women from underserved communities
- Developing a plan of action for a center that would systematically promote greater representation and engagement of women in public life
- Helping develop economic independence for Ethiopian women from Kiryat Gat through training and networking with the employees of the fashion firm Comme Il Faut
- Enabling Arab women to navigate the complex tangle of divorce, child support and custody issues
- Training law students and women leaders from disenfranchised communities to use legal and grassroots organizing tools to promote social change
- Supporting women directors in government ministries, local authorities and public institutions in enhancing their feminist management skills and in promoting a culture of gender and social equality
