Provide funding for programs at the newly built Negev Agro Research and Business Center. These include research projects, equipment (such as computers), education and training activities, and build-out of the center’s auditorium.

The Peres Center for Peace is an Israel-based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting harmony in the Middle East. As stated on their organization’s website: “Our mission is to build an infrastructure of peace and reconciliation by and for the people of the Middle East that promotes socio-economic development, while advancing cooperation and mutual understanding.”As Israel’s celebrates its 60th anniversary, the Peres Center for Peace and the Negev Foundation entered into an agreement to develop agricultural projects together related to each organization’s respective goals. This exciting agreement partners the Negev Foundation with a very influential organization.

The Peres Center for Peace is one of the most dynamic and innovative non-profits in the Middle East. Working with partners that may normally be considered enemies, the organization has facilitated programs between Israeli and Arab stakeholders in a variety of fields such as medicine and health care, business, and agriculture, to name a few. For its work, The Peres Center for Peace has garnered widespread respect and has played a key role in a number of international projects.

Based on a memorandum of understanding between the Negev Foundation and The Peres Center for Peace, both organizations will work together on four distinct projects in the near future. These plans include regional agriculture technology exchanges and culminate in the planting of a quarter-million olives trees, the symbol of peace, in the Ramat Negev region using the area’s brackish or recycled water. The Negev Foundation wholeheartedly looks forward to this important collaboration and the promising benefits our work will bring to the region.

The settlement of Ashalim includes several units of student housing, aimed at attracting young people studying at Ben-Gurion University, The Ayalim Association encourages these students to engage in community service with Negev residents and organizations. It also encourages participants to remains in the region after graduation. Ayalim participants represent a new generation of Israeli pioneers.

This annual festival is one of the region’s most significant cultural and tourist events. Each year, some philanthropic support is needed to make the festival possible.

In addition to these projects, The Negev Foundation has created an incubator program at the Ramat Negev Agro-Research Center’s new Voinovich Center for Entrepreneurship. In preparation for the opening of its new facility, the Ramat Negev Desert AgroResearch Center (RNDARC) through the Negev Foundation in September 2007 launched a study to determine what services and structure would best serve the needs of regional entrepreneurs and ultimately contribute to the economic growth of the region.