Planting A Tree of Life in The Galilee

“It takes a noble man to plant a seed for a tree that will some day give shade to people he may never meet.” – Dr. David Trueblood 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a ceremony placing the cornerstone for the permanent Medical School campus, November 2012.

In fundraising, sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we get to work on a fundraising campaign that means even more than the buildings it funds, the programs it underwrites, or the students it helps. And sometimes a project presents donors with the rare opportunity to change not only an institution or its constituents, but an entire population and an entire region of the world.

One such example: the Bar-Ilan University School of Medicine in Israel. The University is in the early stages of a $400 million capital campaign to fund construction of a permanent campus for Israel’s first new medical school in nearly 40 years. The campus will be built in the Galilee, in the underdeveloped northern region of Israel, where multiple ethnic populations (both Israeli and Arab) live without access to the same levels of infrastructure, health care, job opportunities, and other assets that exist in the center of the country.

Why does this matter? Several reasons, and they stretch well beyond the impact the medical school will have on the University and its students.