The Arab Civic Council
The spine of the model: a community-rooted body that turns residents' priorities into coordinated civic action and municipal influence.
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ARAB CIVIC INSTITUTION · HAIFA · SINCE 1982
Organizing Arab civic power in Haifa.
SDC builds the conditions, tools and platforms through which the Arab community of Haifa organizes itself, sets its own priorities, and shapes the institutions that govern daily life.
For more than four decades, The Social Development Committee - Haifa has worked with the Palestinian Arab community of the city to turn lived experience into organized civic action. We work across education, women's leadership, youth civic agency, planning, community organizing, and cultural memory. Building the relationships, the evidence, and the structures that long-term change requires.
Today that work is taking shape through the Arab Civic Council: a community-rooted body that turns residents' priorities into coordinated civic action and sustained influence on the municipality.
ROOTED
Working in Haifa since 1982, registered as an association in 1987. More than four decades as a central address for Arab residents of the city.
ACCOUNTABLE
Non-partisan, registered, and independently audited every year.
IN MOTION
We build what turns community priorities into organized action, follow-up, and influence.
EVIDENCE-LED
We document, follow up, and make community knowledge usable for advocacy and accountability.
OUR WORK NOW
Four strands, one model.
Education justice and youth civic agency
Evidence-based education priorities turned into advocacy, and young people treated as civic actors in the present. Trusted spaces in schools, youth frameworks and community settings, where what young people learn connects to what they do.
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Women's leadership as governance
Women lead across all community issues: housing, education, services, safety. Built into how the Council governs and decides, not a separate track.
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The Arab Haifa Map
Community documentation of Arab Haifa: its heritage, its stories and places, how the community lives the city now, and the future it intends to author.
Read more →OUR STRATEGY 2026-2029
From resilience to transformation.
01 · The Arab Civic Council
The spine of the model: a community-rooted body that turns residents' priorities into coordinated civic action and municipal influence.
What this makes possible: Community concerns become organized priorities, carried with follow-up and accountability until they reach public influence.
02 · Women's leadership as governance
Women lead across all community issues, built into how the Council governs and decides, not a separate track.
What this makes possible: Women's judgement shapes decisions on housing, education, services and safety at the point those decisions are made, because leadership is built into how the Council governs.
03 · Youth civic agency & education justice
Young people as civic actors in the present, and evidence-based education priorities turned into advocacy.
What this makes possible: Young people get civic practice while they are young enough for it to shape them, and what parents and educators raise about schooling reaches the decisions that govern it.
