IATF Briefing Paper: Informal Education in Israel’s Arab Society

Israel’s Arab society has exceptionally limited access to extracurricular and after-school activities, while also suffering from the high rates of poverty, youth dropout, inactivity, and delinquency that informal education is known to address. Improving the availability and attractiveness of these frameworks for Arab youth has come to be viewed as a social and economic priority, and in 2015, informal education was included as a major component of Government Resolution 922, the historic five-year economic development plan for all of Israel’s Arab society, with NIS 650 million allocated to its advancement.

This paper provides an in-depth review of informal education in Israel’s Arab society, why it is considered a social and economic priority, and how gaps and barriers to the field are now being addressed. The paper closes with a discussion of expected achievements and areas of additional need, and includes a representative mapping of organizations and programs currently active in Arab society

Informal Education in Israel’s Arab Society: From Overlooked Field to Government Priority