This post was originally on Times of Israel
The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation is proud to partner with Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a grassroots pro-Israel campus movement. It has many chapters across the United States and Canada, and is committed to promoting a better understanding of Israel as a member of the family of nations, with a fundamental right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, within secure borders. The Director of SSI — Valeria Chazin — shares how the partnership between the Milstein Family Foundation and SSI has changed lives. You can read her post below.
The partnership between SSI and the Milstein Family Foundation (MFF) illuminates the wide-ranging benefits of collaboration in the pro-Israel space. The MFF has provided critical funding for many of SSI’s activities, enabling us to spread a positive message about Israel to thousands of students on campuses nationwide. The Foundation also provided grants to SSI student leaders to attend the AIPAC policy conference as Milstein Fellows, and a generous matching grant to SSI’s fundraising campaign on Jewcer.com, which helped SSI reach its online fundraising goal for the year.
However, it is not only the shared goals and financial support that makes the partnership between SSI and the Milstein Family Foundation a successful one. It is also the connections that the Foundation has provided between SSI and other organizations, like JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, a unique organization that tells the story of Jews who were expelled from their homes in Arab countries and Iran. Working with JIMENA, SSI has been able to introduce the story of these Jewish refugees to college students as part of more than a dozen joint events on campuses this fall semester, highlighting the fact that the refugee issue is not one-sided.
The MFF also brought us together with BlueStar, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering the next generation of Israel advocates. We invited BlueStar’s founder, Jonathan Carey, to speak at our first national conference, held in Minneapolis in August 2015. Mr. Carey gave a thought-provoking speech about the importance of not being afraid to ask hard questions, and taught us the right way of doing so. The theme was a perfect fit for SSI’s message of changing the nature of Israel advocacy from reactive to proactive.
In all of our work together, both of our organizations keep in mind that the ultimate beneficiaries are our students and Israel. When the goal is clear, it is easier to find a way to get there, and the partnership between the organizations proves itself over and over as both meaningful and productive.
To learn more about the philanthropic work of Adam Milstein and the Milstein Family Foundation, visit http://milsteinff.org. Also – check out Adam Milstein and the Milstein Family Foundation on Facebook!