His eight-year-old son nicknamed him Spiderman for his agility in scaling the marblefaced buildings that he restores, but four years ago Raviv Schiller was tangled in a web not of his own making. “I was at a point where I didn’t have money to survive,” Schiller said. “It wasn’t that it was so much money I needed, but when I was stuck, Koret was the only one who helped me get financing and helped me get back on my feet.”

Schiller and nine of his 11 employees at Schiller, Ltd., which has developed a unique method for invisibly adhering marble facing to building exteriors, had been called into reserve duty to do battle in Jenin during the height of the intifada. His two main clients stopped paying their bills, the Value Added Tax (VAT) on materials was due, and his wife was at home, pregnant with their third child, when the couple learned that their then three-year-old daughter needed heart surgery. With no one to run the business, expenses piled up while income dwindled to zero.

Schiller’s wife, Mira, began a letter-writing campaign, first to VAT officials and then to members of the Knesset, asking for a tax payment schedule, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. When a military reporter for Israeli radio got wind of the situation, the Schillers’ luck began to change.

Pressed aggressively by the news reporter in an on-air interview, the VAT director relented, offering the payment schedule that Schiller needed. And when a KIEDF staff member heard the radio report, she put in a call to Schiller and offered the possibility of a loan. A year later, Schiller’s business had tripled. Today, it has doubled in volume again. He now serves five to 10 clients at a time, employs a staff of 50, and has developed the “Schiller, Ltd.” name into a known, quality brand in Israel. “The loan motivated me to get up and get it together,” Schiller said. “Next year will be even better.”

A collective of Arab women has built a field of dreams with microloans guaranteed by KIEDF.

Just as Popeye touts his spinach, Arab mothers tout zaatar as an herb that will make children smart. So these Arab women — each a wife and mother — had little trouble deciding on the enterprise to finance with their pooled microloans. Motivated to go into business for themselves, and assisted by the Rural Women’s Development Project and KIEDF, they rented a field, bought supplies and plants, and returned to the land — as farmers, which is traditional for Arab women, and as owners of their own crop, which is not.

Their training included assertiveness and personal presentation, how to make and market prepared foods, and a taste of business management.

The women, who come from the village of Makr, near Akko, ride a bumpy road some three miles long to land in the field they can call their own. A lean-to, built of two-by-fours and a flimsy tarp, offers shady respite from the sun, a place to sit back on pillows and take stock of their work.

Here, they decided to sell half the crop as processed zaatar, or hyssop, which is used as a spice on pita and other foods. The other half is sold as mature plants. With the help of a business consultant provided by the program, they are tracking the expenses and proceeds of each to determine the most lucrative way to market their crop.

“They are doing it with their heart,” said Chagit Rubinstein, KIEDF microenterprise initiative program director. “With heart, and support of their families, their village, and KIEDF, this women’s collective will realize its dreams.”

The gentle stirring and stretching of little arms and legs from beneath a sea of fluffy pink comforters means it’s wake-up time at the Ahab Diab Day Care Center, the only center for Arab toddlers in Akko.

The clean scent of fresh laundry and the tinkling of gentle music permeate the cheerful center, strategically located near a community health clinic. Director Igbal Swaed practices grassroots marketing: On the broad sidewalk out in front, she encourages pregnant women on their way to prenatal checkups to have a look at the fee-for-service day care center she has created. She knows that many modern Arab women are eager to break the old-fashioned mold of leaving their children with a grandmother, seeking instead a more enriching environment.

At this center, named for an Arab student at the Technion who drowned at the age of 25, children learn English, movement, and music as part of their preschool curriculum. A speech therapist, a child psychologist, and an infant masseuse make regular visits and consult as needed. Hot breakfast and lunch are served each day. While the scenario sounds standard to an American consumer, it offers a courageous innovation in an Arab community. As testimonial to the timeliness of Igbal’s idea, the center opened with 35 children ages three months to three years. Six months later, it was fully subscribed with 52 children cared for by 12 employees.

“There’s a different approach to child care here,” she explained. “Here you have to pay, and yet people still prefer to come here.”

Igbal and her husband used their savings to secure the location and mortgaged their home to realize this dream, but it was the loan facilitated through KIEDF’s Arab-Israeli loan program that “made the difference in giving me the confidence to open,” she said.

“It would have been very difficult to open without the loan,” Igbal said. “We waited for it so we could do it right.”

Wudha lives with her family of 8 children, on the outskirts of Kseife, a Bedouin village near Arad in the Negev. Wudha's husband has a large herd of sheep and goats, which gives him control over the family's income.

For many years Wudha has dreamed of having her own herd that will allow her to make labane (special cheese), sell it to her neighbors and earn some money of her own.

SAWA's loan of $1200 helped her fulfill her dream. She bought five sheep and some food for them and started raising her own herd.

Micro loans help Bedouin women break the mold

VIDEO: Israel's Bedouins bid farewell to nomadic life

Behind his back, Aharon (“Nonie”) Cohen Mohliver’s colleagues call him “a little Bibi,” a reference to Knesset Member and former Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, the political dynamo with whom he has spent the second year of his KIEDF Koret fellowship.

Energetic, articulate, and highly motivated, Mohliver has dived into policy research with a vengeance. In his first year, working with Economics Committee Chair Amnon Cohen, he wrote not one, but two policy papers on conditions adversely affecting small-business interests in Israel: One on bank credit, and one on business licensing.

The issues, now under discussion in the Knesset, underscore core structural problems in the Israeli economy. And therein lies the power of the KIEDF Koret Fellows program: Problems encountered by small-businesses in the field are examined by fellows selected from the brightest graduates of Israel’s universities and placed with members of the Knesset or with regulatory agency heads. The KIEDF Koret Fellow Aharon (“Nonie”) Cohen Mohliver Education reform key to economic prosperity 6 fellows’ mission is to develop and advocate free-market policies addressing issues that facilitate small business development, employment expansion, and private-sector economic growth in Israel.

Mohliver, a Hebrew University graduate, was one of the rare fellows invited to stay in the program a second year. Working with the well-known Netanyahu, he has focused on a problem of personal interest: the Israeli education system.

Building on the Dovrat report, a study similar to the No Child Left Behind Act, Mohliver advocates for education reforms that will bring a businesslike approach to education, including local autonomy for principals to make personnel and budget decisions, and higher salaries for teachers. Unless it’s improved soon, Israel’s education system will impede the country’s ability to compete in the global marketplace, Mohliver said.

“Education is a key to economic success,” Mohliver said. “The Israeli people deserve nothing less than an excellent education system that will help us succeed internationally.”

“My MK (Member of Knesset) actually spends time with me to understand the issues that I am working on, and he listens to what I have to say,” the Ben-Gurion University graduate said. “That was the biggest surprise, and a very good one!”

Snir works with MK Amnon Cohen, who has mentored several Koret Fellows (see Mohliver, p. 6) and who served as Economics Committee chair during her fellowship. Fhis part, the Sohr as party member found Snir to be an incredible asset.

“I wish every Member of Knesset could have a Koret Fellow,” Cohen said. “She pays attention to my work, her research is thorough and thoughtful, and at the end of the day, I rely on her for a great deal of policy reform that I put forward.”

Cohen, who has been assigned Koret Fellows in the past, is a big supporter of the program. Because Knesset members do not have large staffs like U.S. senators and members of Congress do, the Fellows play a key role in policy development, reform, and enactment.

Now working on her master’s degree in business administration (MBA), Snir’s research focuses on making television advertising available to small businesses. Commercial stations have the monopoly on TV advertising and charge prices so high that only the very largest Israeli companies can afford it, Snir said.

“I’m in favor of leveling the field,” she said. “Small business is the route to economic sustainability for Israel.”