Winter 2007 Table of Contents

- Shurush Launches New Joint Arab-Jewish Microloan Program
- Introducing Shurush’s Newest Board Member
- Check Out What’s New at Shurush.org
- Help Shurush Plant the Roots of Hope, Cooperation, and Opportunity

Shurush Launches New Joint Arab-Jewish Microloan Program

Recently, Shurush partnered with the Israeli organization KIEDF (Koret Israel Economic Development Funds) to launch an innovative new microenterprise project providing microloans and business training to a joint group of Arab and Jewish borrowers. The pilot group comprises 25-30 low-income Arab and Jewish women, from the same city or neighborhood, who are interested in opening a home-based micro business or a joint business venture. Participants receive intensive business development training in group and individual meetings for between three and four months. After training, small loans will be provided to eligible entrepreneurs, who receive group and individual professional business consultant mentoring for an additional eight to nine months.

While microfinance institutions traditionally seek to create employment and alleviate poverty, our program goes a step further by addressing not only the economic crisis in the Middle East, but also the social issues that threaten the stability and prosperity of the region. KIEDF runs the only fund in Israel providing small business loans to Arabs. For more information on the program, click here.
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Introducing Shurush’s Newest Board Member
Omer Ben-Zur, a native of Ramat Gan, Israel, earned his bachelor’s degree from Tel Aviv University in 2002 and his MBA from UCLA-Anderson, from which he graduated with honors in 2006. He received the prestigious Koret Knesset Fellowship and served as an economic advisor to a committee chair in the Israeli Parliament from 2002 until 2004. During this time, he initiated seven bills in the Knesset, including a bill aimed at reforming the Israeli financial services industry. He is currently employed in Los Angeles by George Smith Partners.
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Check Out What’s New at Shurush.org
Shurush has recently revamped our website, www.shurush.org, with a number of exciting new revisions. Among the new additions is a social impact meter at the top of the homepage, which quantifies our program’s impact to date. Since 2004, the 21 microloans funded by Shurush (or by repayments by Shurush entrepreneurs) have improved the economic situation of 133 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza!
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Help Shurush Plant the Roots of Hope, Cooperation, and Opportunity
As many of you know, the word “shurush” means “roots” in both Arabic and Hebrew. While we continue to build on our history of success and look forward to measuring the impact of our innovative new partnership program, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what we can achieve through microloans that change lives. Please help Shurush expand our programs so that we can fund even more microloans. For example, a donation of $500 gives Arab and Jewish entrepreneurs not only the opportunity to engage in a relationship-building training program, but also a loan to launch a home-based micro business or a joint business venture. In order to achieve our goal of improving the economic situation in the Middle East, we need your help! Please visit http://www.shurush.org/contribute/contribute.html to learn more.
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In the Next Edition of The Roots Report
- Meet Shurush’s newest West Bank entrepreneur
- Our impact: What Shurush has accomplished
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