Hi, my name is Idit Segev and I am a social entrepreneur and professional mentor for social projects in a special way I have developed, called Mentor-In.

  After years of dealing with the commercial side of art and people (two stores: Totem on Sheinkin St., Tel Aviv and Katom, its predecessor in Alon Hagalil), with a liberal arts degree in General Literature, getting hands-on education in business and sales at an insurance agency where I worked in my youth, and various continuing education courses I took over time. I made the real change in my life in Boston, USA, where in the Arts Administration graduate program - parallel to Cultural Institution Management studies in Israel - I was exposed for the first time in my life to the power of change embodied in social entrepreneurship. The dozens of projects we encountered taught me to treat social projects as a humane engine of community action, spirit and content that possess a value for change and rehabilitation in our lives.

Since returning to Israel, I have found myself studying and working for wages and as a volunteer in producing and managing various social community projects. Three years of work in the Nigun Halev congregation turned my learning into reality: I practiced working with teams of volunteers, solidifying and enlarging the congregation, coping with challenges and pitfalls in the development of a voluntary-community organization. I learned to deal with budgets, initiate and establish different projects and, mainly, I came to understand the power of individuals to create and transform reality through persistent action. My guides and mentors from within the congregation were among the best there are anywhere!  

A moment before becoming integrated into the congregation I initiated the Blossoming, Women's Content Encounters project, which formed, over several years of activities, an open, accepting, ever growing women's community that convenes at the museum for Friday morning encounters once a month revolving around topics of art, women and life stories. I also took part, for an entire year, in a Beit Midrash [Jewish house of learning] called Tehuda [meaning: resonance], a welcome initiative of the pluralist Beit Midrash Kolot and the Hanadiv Foundation. The learning experience, the eclectic group members, and the different teachers and initiatives we were exposed to that year instilled the social "bug" in me and even helped formulate and shape it.

 In order to become a social entrepreneur, you need faith and acknowledgement of the power of the individual to influence, change and improve social conditions, but no less so, you need a great deal of patience and support. Over the past two years, I developed the Mentor-In method to address the need of entrepreneurs for accompaniment, support and experienced guidance in coping with the challenges faced by social projects. I enlisted my theoretical and practical experience, as well as the love I've acquired for teamwork, together with creativity and the guts to take the road I believe to be the right one.  

The website Idit's, Social Entrepreneurship displays various ventures I've initiated or accompanied and projects in which I was, or am still, involved in on any level as entrepreneur, partner or mentor. The site was born out of the need to expose the processes and expand the circles of social entrepreneurship based on the Mentor-In work method. Additionally, the site provides a separate virtual home for each of the different projects, a vehicle for disseminating content, articles and links on relevant topics and even the opportunity to create open or closed forums.  

And me?
I'm looking for new challenges!  

If you have a creative idea, new social initiative,
a dream that refuses to go away and keeps recurring, over and over again;
if you want to stop waiting for something to happen and get up and do it, but aren't sure how to overcome the obstacles;
if you're involved in a social project that is stuck and refuses to grow or develop -  

I invite you to phone me or send a "telegram" from inside the site.
First, we'll meet for coffee,
and if we hit it off -
we can depart on a journey together.  

Idit Segev
050-2008212