SHATIL Staff Profile: Avi Dabush, Environmental Justice Project Coordinator

In honor of SHATIL's 25th anniversary, NIF News will run monthly profiles of the talented people who make up SHATIL.

Avi Dabush, 31, grew up in an Orthodox family in Ashkelon, the grandson of immigrants from Tripoli and Damascus. Influenced by the spiritual writings of Pinchas Sadeh and Hermann Hesse, Avi took off his kipah at 17, a move that ironically led him to feel more religious. As a youth, he volunteered with families in distress and autistic children. After his IDF service, Avi earned a BA with top honors in behavioral sciences from Ben Gurion University, where he was active with Green Course, a national student environmental organization. There, he led the successful campaign against the building of a $1.5 billion coal power station in Ashkelon. "That's when I saw what a strong community could do," he says. Although he had considered becoming a psychologist, Avi pursued an MA in organizational sociology so he could "influence society on a structural level." In 2005, Avi was chosen to coordinate SHATIL'S cellular antenna efforts and its Unemployment Forum, eventually working to modify the Wisconsin Plan. He went on to coordinate SHATIL'S North Star Forum, which held public hearings and prepared reports on the effects on the home front of the Second Lebanon War. After the untimely death of Alona Vardi, who founded and headed SHATIL'S Environmental Justice Project, Avi was appointed to serve as coordinator. Shortly thereafter, the daily Ma'ariv chose him as one of ten Israelis who most influenced the environment in 2007.

"Our natural resources are dwindling," Avi says. "Creating a sustainable future means changing our economic system and organizing society in a more just fashion...SHATIL enables me to help people grow their dreams. Working here is a blessing."