Israel’s official international
development cooperation program was launched in late 1957 with the aim of
sharing with the rest of the developing world the know-how and technologies
which provided the basis for Israel’s own rapid development. MASHAV, the Hebrew
acronym for Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, was
established as a division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What started as a
modest program focused on grassroots-level human capacity building at a time
when Israel itself was still very much a developing country, has blossomed into
an extensive program of cooperation throughout the developing world with the
aim of ensuring social, economic and environmental sustainable development.
Since its establishment, MASHAV
has trained close to 270,000 course participants from approximately 132
countries in Israel and abroad and has developed dozens of demonstration
projects worldwide.
MASHAV has consistently made its
priority the goal of poverty alleviation, provision of food security,
empowerment of women and upgrade of basic health and education services. The
formalization of these priorities in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
has only caused us to redouble our longstanding efforts to put Israeli
solutions at the service of developing countries in order to further their
implementation.