During a discussion at the Kyiv Jewish Forum 2020, Marina Yudborovsky, CEO of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, said that the coronavirus has significantly influenced the work of the Israeli philanthropic and charitable organizations.
Thus, if earlier they supported narrow specialization projects, then after the start of the pandemic they decided to expand their activities to help those in need and entire Jewish and non-Jewish communities in other countries, in particular in Europe.
“I think, a lot of folks in the philanthropic community have expanded their mandates, including us. We don’t normally do any humanitarian work, we do not do social services, that’s not our area of focus, but when this crisis hit, it became clear that this is going to be a long-term and global challenge, and we felt we needed to expand that mandate and our board was very supportive of this,” said Yudborovsky.
According to her, philanthropists turn to new models of engagement in terms of scale: organizations learn to break big events into multiple smaller ones; they refuse from travelling for certain things, if something can be done virtually or remotely.
Yudborovsky also noted: since this is a global crisis and we are all in the same boat, there is no longer such an option when there is a problem in one place, while everyone else is doing OK, and you can focus resources in one direction.
“I think that Israel has been controlling the situation at home during the first wave of the pandemic well enough and can focus some energy outside. We see the same thing across Europe, we have focused, for example, on many places that do not have such a robust philanthropic infrastructure. But this is an area that we are familiar with, where we know that help is needed. And I know that Israel is also focusing its efforts on those places where they can make a difference and where other resources are scarce. And the fact that they are able to do this underlines the fact that this is the system that the Jewish world has had for a long time and was able to leverage in other crises,” said Yudborovsky.
As reported, President of the State of Israel Reuven Rivlin gave a welcoming speech to the organizers and participants of KJF 2020. He said that the Forum speakers, including leading political, diplomatic, religious and communal leaders from Israel, Ukraine and from around the world, have proven to be ready for actions, not just words.