Social activist in sandals

Parents of toddlers, families at risk, people with disabilities, elderly people from the Caucasus and Ethiopian Israelis - all benefit from Gvanim, a nonprofit organization based in the desert town of Sderot. Nitai Schreiber, a member of the urban Kibbutz Migvan, founded the organization 16 years ago as part of a social revolution in the famously unemployment-stricken town.

The Gvanim organization, which Schreiber now runs with Barak Bitnun, has dozens of social projects on its agenda, including a center for diagnosing developmental problems in preschoolers, assistance programs for youth at risk, a youth club in a neighborhood of Russian immigrants, a center that connects young people with employers and educational institutions, and dozens of other activities.

	Nitai Schreiber

The start, 23 years ago, was far more modest.

Schreiber was born on Kibbutz Nirim and served in the Shaldag air force commandos. He came to Sderot with five friends to establish an urban kibbutz - a new model for cooperative settlement in the city. The members lived in crowded apartments in a public housing block and pooled their resources. Their goal was to build a real, permanent partnership with people on the margins.

That didn't happen without raising eyebrows on the part of the residents, who had negative associations with "kibbutzim," but the project took root and over time the members purchased lots to build houses. Now the suspicion is gone, but the battle for Sderot is still far from over.

About 30% of Sderot's residents receive assistance from the welfare authorities. And the past decade hasn't been easy: After fighting to get beyond its unpromising start as a transit camp, in the 1990s Sderot absorbed 90,000 new immigrants from the Caucasus, which doubled its population - a welcome addition from many perspectives, but ruinous given the lack of infrastructure to integrate them.

Since the new immigrants required significant support, the city found itself mired in financial and other difficulties once again.

The trauma of the missiles

In addition there was the incessant barrage of Qassam rockets, which shattered the residents' bodies and souls year after year.

"Sderot is a strong community, but it has issues," remarks Schreiber, 49. His four children have grown up under the ceaseless shelling. "The Qassams have affected all of us. It's an ongoing trauma that hasn't ended and is still present in our lives."

If Sderot has survived all the difficulties and somehow even emerged strengthened, it is largely thanks to the model developed by Schreiber and his friends.

Sderot has shown surprising fortitude, thanks among other things to a strong sense of community. And one reason for that is the strong cooperative communities such as the urban kibbutz and the large religious Zionist community and its social services. The secret of its success is that without logos or signs, Gvanim puts Sderot first rather than itself. That is how it gets other groups to work with it.

"Gvanim works to bring growth," says Schreiber. "The secret is an organizational culture that enables development. My contribution is to get more people to think in terms of cooperation instead of competition. That's why we sleep well at night," he says.

This cooperation has become so central to the life of the town that Gvanim now plays a major role in running it, along with the religious Zionist NGO Afikim Banegev. When Eli Moyal was mayor, there were even complaints that Sderot was essentially being run by nonprofits and the municipality director general, who made decisions and bypassed the elected leadership.

Now Schreiber is working to expand his model of community and social activity with a new umbrella organization called Rikma. This organization is a group of 100 communities in peripheral areas. Some are religious Zionist, and others were established by graduates of youth groups or people from the Caucasus or Ethiopia.

The funding for Rikma, in which Schreiber serves as co-executive director alongside Shlomo Klein, comes from five foundations: the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee, the Oran Foundation, the Gandir Foundation and the United Israel Appeal Canada.

Schreiber is an autodidact, and has two certificates of which he is proud: an Entrepreneur of the Year award for social welfare, which he received from the Ernst & Young accounting firm and the Globes newspaper; and a certificate he received from the chief of staff for a secret security project he took part in during reserve duty.

"I try to give meaning to my life through contributing to society and devoting my life to social activism," he says.

In 2008 Gvanim won a prize from the president, but returned it to protest the security situation in the town.