About
We are a young, Israel-based NGO with a mission to assist the public sector in acquiring tools and knowledge for effective and successful diversity management.
In order to do this, we are producing educational resources, developing workshops, and creating working tools to add to the diversity management tool box of teachers, principals, police, and military officers.
During the last decade, the Israeli society has suffered greatly from an unofficial policy of divide and conquer. Hate, incitement, social exclusion, and the sense of threat from different social groups has become tools of governance. Entire social groups have been delegitimized, negated, and discriminated against.
As racism, discrimination, incitement and social exclusion have become the rule of the day, and to some point the natural state of affairs, this has had a substantial toll on social cohesion, solidarity, willingness to engage in dialogue and goes without saying that this has hurt the willingness to accept the other, lowering mutual tolerance considerably.
We have become a weaker society because the incitement of hate and fear damage social trust. We have become more intolerant, less accepting, a less engaging society, and as a result, less democratic and less creative.
By acting proactively, Givun with its work and solutions, fully engages itself to correct the current trajectory and focuses to create a healthy and strong Israeli society back, based on love, acceptance and trust, necessary foundations for a sustainable society.
"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength." ~Maya Angelou
Our Mission
Diversity and inclusion involve an ongoing learning process.
Just as people train their bodies to be in better physical and health condition, we advocate for the idea of training individuals in the public sector on the advantages of social diversity and improving their ability to teach others and themselves to accept and manage diversity efficiently.
Our programs are designed so that diversity and inclusion becomes part and parcel of the work of teachers and community workers, with the goal of expanding our scope of activities to cater the needs of the military, police and health systems down the line.
Our Vision
We advocate for the use of a wider definition of diversity that takes into account issues of gender, sexual orientation and preferences, mental health, body image, physical disabilities, attitudes, personality, political affiliation, age, socio-economic class, etc., instead of limiting discourse on diversity over national and/or ethno-religious affiliations.
Due to the fact that we see social diversity in broader terms, we do not find it necessary to engage in consensus building or social compromises – we advocate instead for the need of communicating with others and having the opportunity to learn from them.
While other organizations direct their efforts towards educating selective elite groups, as a strategy to impact from "above", we aim to educate as many "ordinary" teachers, military and police officers and community workers in order to produce a sustainable chain of change from "below".
We believe social initiatives dealing with social sustainability must combine elements related to environment sustainability. Social sustainability and environment sustainability are correlated.