Community Advocacy is a voluntary community organization that works to strengthen the awareness of residents concerning their social rights, so they access and promote their social rights as an expression of their empowerment as individuals and as a community.

Our primary goals are to teach residents to advocate on their own behalf or on behalf of their neighbors in order to access their legal entitlements, to find solutions to common problems and participate in decision making bodies which affect their lives; to provide information and expertise with regards to rights and entitlements; and to facilitate community empowerment and solidarity.

Community Advocacy is unique in its approach to working with people in the community. The basis of our work is developing relationships among members of the community and professionals in order to empower individuals and the community as a whole, thereby enabling them to make decisions and to develop their abilities to help themselves. While we popularize information and provide expertise in the fields of social work and law, we consciously enable the community, the people whose lives stand to be affected by programmatic decisions, to make their own determinations. The majority of our board members are residents elected from our local steering committees in Jerusalem, Beersheva and Lod. 75% of the members of our local steering committees, which are responsible for the policy decisions that guide the organization, are neighborhood residents.

While Israel takes pride in having a developed, even thriving, economy, this is valid only for those in the higher levels. The continued implementations of harsh economic policies have combined with already existing hardship and marginalization to threaten the economic security of the people with whom we work. Thus it is clear why the issue of poverty has taken a primary place on our agenda.

Public education and involvement forms the basis for all of our work in the community. In the framework of our storefront advocacy centers in Jerusalem, Beersheva, and a mixed neighborhood in Lod, trained community volunteers disseminate information about rights, entitlements and services and provide individual advocacy support which enable residents to access these rights guaranteed by law.  We conduct outreach programs including home visits and information meetings to bring rights education to residents in the community and advocacy services at home to elderly and disabled residents who may not be able to reach our advocacy centers. We organize community action groups enabling residents to work together to find solutions to community problems and advocate for changes in national policy which impact on their wellbeing. We litigate precedent setting cases in order to promote the rights of disadvantaged persons and promote community economic development projects, to strengthen the community and mitigate the impact of poverty -enabling residents to leverage community resources to improve their situation.

G Back to "About Community Advocacy"