MASHAV Guiding Principles

MASHAV activities focus on areas in which Israel has a comparative advantage and/or accumulated expertise. MASHAV believes that our greatest possible contribution can be made in fields where Israel has expertise directly relevant to emerging nations. Due to Israel's own successful experience of rapid development, the list of such fields is particularly extensive, including: irrigation, desert agriculture and combat of desertification, water management, early childhood education, community development, emergency and disaster medicine, refugee absorption and employment programs, and many many others.

MASHAV is committed to cooperation throughout the developing world. We do not limit our activities to a small number of target countries: our focus is on areas of expertise rather than on geographical areas. We extend our hand in partnership wherever Israel's experience is relevant.

MASHAV prefers small-scale activities aimed at bottom-up development. MASHAV has a long-standing policy of targeting the grassroots level in many of our activities. We endeavor to identify relevant micro-project activities that can serve as a catalyst for wider-scale development.

MASHAV's focus is on human capacity building and training. Our belief is that training of trainers and other capacity building activities is the best way to achieve maximum impact in development activity. Education leads to empowerment - the surest guarantee of sustainable growth. Israel's large reservoir of foreign-language speakers in all areas of expertise enables MASHAV to offer a particularly rich training program worldwide in a wide variety of languages, encompassing both courses and other project-focused training activities.

MASHAV seeks cooperative projects with other development organizations. MASHAV offers partnership in subjects in which Israel has comparative advantage, to all development agencies, governmental as well as non-governmental, international agencies and development banks. MASHAV's experience with such joint projects, often on a cost-sharing basis, has been very positive, broadening the impact of MASHAV's potential contribution and the efficacy of the projects undertaken.

MASHAV believes that development cooperation can and should be used to forge bonds of peaceful cooperation with Israel's neighbors. Consequently, MASHAV endeavors to be active throughout the Middle East, regardless of the political climate.