Our view from The Jerusalem Post studio captures it all: the scarred but determined skyline of Jerusalem, the Knesset standing watch over a country in recovery. It is here that Ronny Douek, Israel Prize laureate and one of the quiet architects of Israeli civil society, outlined his next mission.
After decades of founding collective impact initiatives that strengthened education, healthcare, and community leadership, Douek is launching – for the second time since October 7 – a NIS 100 million fund to rebuild the social systems he says are essential for Israel’s future.
“The strength of a country doesn’t begin with its military,” he said. “It begins in classrooms, in neighborhoods, in the way people care for one another. That’s where a nation holds together – or doesn’t.”
The fund, already backed by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Mandel Foundation and others, will focus on every element needed for children’s and youth’s resilience – from education and mental health to youth leadership and municipal readiness. In Douek’s words: “We’re building permanent foundations for the next generation’s resilience. Not in theory – in the field.”
“October 7 exposed what we ignored at home”
Douek has long been a crisis-builder – someone who creates systems precisely where the state falls short. After the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, he founded Zionism 2000 to promote civic responsibility across social and political divides. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led a national effort called “Veshamarta” (And you shall guard) that coordinated the protection of 365 geriatric facilities, likely saving thousands of elderly lives.
But the Hamas attack on October 7, he said, shattered more than assumptions. “It was a breakdown of systems – security, yes, but also psychological, educational, and social leadership,” he said. “And above all, it revealed the level of disconnection between different parts of Israeli society.”
Within days of the massacre, Douek, backed by his two civil society organizations, Shetufim (Partners) and Zionism 2000, founded the new Children’s Resilience National Initiatives, partnering with JFNA, UJA, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Scheinberg Foundation, and other local and global organizations, and rapidly organized new support frameworks. They established resilience campuses in Eilat and the Dead Sea that provided schooling, therapy, structure, and stability for thousands of children evacuated from the Gaza border region and northern Israel.
“You could see the shock on their faces,” he recalled. “They weren’t misbehaving. They weren’t even speaking. They were drawing rockets, shadows, and funerals. Some had lost their homes, others had seen their parents killed. And there was no playbook for how to care for them. So we built one.”
Those sites became 24/7 community centers staffed with volunteers, educators, and therapists. Since then, more than 37,000 hours of emotional support have been delivered.
“Every time a child laughed again, it reminded us: this work isn’t repair – it’s rebuilding something new.”
“You learn quickly when you don’t belong”
Douek’s sensitivity to displacement is not accidental. Born in Haifa in 1958, he spent much of his childhood in the Ivory Coast, where his father worked for a government construction company. The experience, he said, was formative.
“We were Israeli, but also foreign. I learned French before I learned Hebrew. We went to a local college while most Israeli expats sent their kids to the Israeli school. That was my parents’ choice, and it shaped everything.”
When he returned to Israel at age 12, he struggled. “I couldn’t read Hebrew. I had an accent. I was an outsider in my own country. So I had to learn quickly – language, humor, body language, everything.”
But that need to adapt became a quiet driver in his leadership. “You don’t forget what it feels like to not be seen,” he said. “You don’t forget what it means to be on the edge of a system that wasn’t built for you.”
That perspective later inspired his early work building mobile community centers for Ethiopian and Russian immigrants in the 1990s. “I saw them living in caravan sites with no structure, no transportation, no after-school programs. So we brought everything to them.”
One of his proudest memories: walking into a piano lesson and seeing a Russian music teacher teaching three Ethiopian kids inside one of the mobile centers. “That moment,” he said, “was Israel.”
“Resilience is built through consistency, not adrenaline”
When asked how he defines resilience, Douek doesn’t reach for buzzwords.
“It’s the mother in Kiryat Shmona who organizes after-school activities so her kids don’t hear every siren. It’s the principal who notices which students have gone quiet. It’s the town that doesn’t wait for a directive and starts training youth counselors. These are the people who prevent collapse – quietly.”
He believes Israeli society has become reactive rather than prepared. “We jump in with good hearts after a tragedy,” he said. “But we don’t build the layers that would reduce the damage in the first place. And that’s what has to change.”
The new fund will support resilience centers for children and youth in cities like Sderot, Netivot, Tiberias, and the northern border region, based on these principles. “You build by investing in local capacity, not just national programs,” he said. “If the neighborhood is strong, the country is strong.”
Douek speaks carefully but passionately when it comes to Israel’s internal divides – particularly around military and civil service.
“Every young person in this country should have a role in shaping its future. It doesn’t have to look the same for everyone, but it has to be a national expectation,” he said. “Because when some serve and others don’t, we lose the connective tissue. And without that, there is no ‘we.’”
He supports a flexible, mandatory framework for national service – military, civilian, educational, technological – adapted for different communities.
“I’ve sat with haredi [ultra-Orthodox] educators who want their boys to contribute, and Arab leaders who want their youth to feel part of the national project. But they feel like the systems aren’t speaking to them.”
He emphasized that national service could become one of the most unifying tools Israel has – if built correctly.
“We need to move beyond guilt and blame. We need to design something that brings people in, not pushes them out.”
“You don’t need a law to do the right thing”
Douek’s core principle is that civil society must lead where the government cannot.
“Ministries are overloaded. Budgets are frozen. But the need is now. That’s why philanthropy, business, and local leadership must take the lead.”
He believes in proving models first – and lobbying for policy later. “When we ran the ‘5x2’ math initiative, aimed at increasing student participation in advanced math and STEM subjects in Israel, we didn’t wait for the government. We launched it, and only then did the government join. Five years later, the number of students taking five-unit math doubled nationwide. Now it’s a national priority.”
He intends to follow the same model with the new resilience fund: identify a problem, design a solution, show results, and scale through partnerships.
“Policy is powerful,” he said. “But precedent is faster.” Over the course of his career, Douek has launched dozens of national projects. But he always circles back to the people who’ve built them with him.
“We’ve worked with incredible women leading community centers, young social workers in development towns, volunteers who left their jobs to help kids during COVID. We’ve never done anything alone.”
In recent years, he has mentored the next generation of nonprofit leaders, helped mayors create social innovation hubs, and advised philanthropic families on how to build high-impact giving strategies.
When asked what leadership means to him, he answered without hesitation: “Responsibility. Not to be the loudest, but to be the one who shows up.”
“Our children are watching”
As the conversation turned to the future, Douek became visibly more emotional.
“We are shaping not just policy or programs – we are shaping memory,” he said. “The children of October 7 will remember how we responded. Whether we took care of them. Whether we stood together. Whether we helped each other rebuild.”
He sees the next decade as defining – both for those who lead and for those who grow up in the shadow of trauma.
“If we give them meaning, they will carry this country forward; if we give them silence, they will walk away from it and we will end up with a lost generation.”
Douek spoke quietly about the generation growing up in the shadow of October 7 – children who, he said, will carry not just the memory of loss, but the responsibility for what comes next.
“They’ll remember who showed up for them,” the civil society builder said. “Not the speeches or the ceremonies, but the people who stayed. The teachers who rebuilt their classrooms. The counselors who listened. The neighbors who didn’t leave when things got hard.”
He paused, then added, “In ten years, these kids will either inherit a country that held together, or a country that gave up on itself. And they’ll know the difference.”
For Douek, the real measure of success isn’t headlines or even political change. It’s whether the next generation feels proud to carry the weight of Israel forward – because they saw with their own eyes that it was worth it.