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Siemens invested sum in millions of $15 for 37% Shares
KKL-JNF invested sum in millions of $ 3 for 4% Shares, The KKL-JNF’s only investment in 110-year history.
Private individuals invested sum in millions $7 for 58% Shares, includes Abramowitz and Rosenblatt, Kibbutz Ketura and 120 others, who together put up $25, 000 a week for 18 months.
Arava Institute for Environmental Studies 1 % as a Gift. The AIES brings students from all over the world to study cross-border environmental collaboration. The income from the investment will go toward scholarships.
Social Activism
Abramowitz earned a Bachelor’s degree in Jewish Public Policy, an academic program he designed for himself at BostonUniversity, and a Master’s degree in Journalism from ColumbiaUniversity. While still a student, he founded and headed the campus anti-apartheid movement, where he met Susan Silverman, a fellow social activist. It was a meeting written in the stars as the earnest Abramowitz captured Susan’s heart. From there, it was only a short path to the chuppah and children.
“I was enchanted by the idea that the ideas I grew up with had Jewish roots, ” Susan told the Epoch Times, explaining her decision to study Judaism and ultimately become a rabbi.
After giving birth to two girls, Aliza (19, recently discharged from the IDF) and Hallèl (18, in 12th grade), Susan one day brought home a sheaf of papers and lay them down in front of Abramowitz, who leafed through them and said, “Okay. Sounds good.” That was how they came to adopt their two Ethiopian-born sons, Adár (now 13), who they received when he was nine months old, and Zamìr (now 11), who was four years old when he joined the Silverman-Abramowitz family. Susan then gave birth to Ashira, now nine.
Since childhood, Susan knew she would one day adopt children. “My parents always took in homeless children. I saw up close children who didn’t have families, ” she says.
Abramowitz thrived alongside Susan, forming a multimedia company and throwing himself into social-Zionist endeavors and human-rights activism. Among others, he was involved in the cause of Soviet Jewry and the aliya of Jews from Ethiopia and Yemen.
After Ashira was born, the couple decided to take a long sabbatical to consolidate their family and there was no doubt Israel would be the destination; specifically, Kibbutz Ketura, in the heart of the southern Arava, where a good part of the population is English speaking. Twenty-five years before, Abramowitz had been a volunteer there and knew the location was remote enough that he would not be distracted by his activism “vice.”
The Arava is quiet and isolated — the perfect spot for concentrating on book writing, as both Abramowitz and Susan had planned: Susan on the subject of Jewish adoption and Abramowitz on how Jews could be “a people with a purpose.”
Susan completed her book two months ago and has begun an international adoption project linking communities around the globe, enabling the adoption of a larger number of children. Abramowitz, however, hasn’t yet started on his book – something he can “blame” on those life-changing events.
Life-changing event number two for Abramowitz came in November 2012 with the launch of Energyia Global Capital (EGC).
In the summer of 2011, the couple traveled to Rwanda to visit their friend Anne Heyman, whom they had met at Ketura and had spoken with at length about the genocide that left 1.2 million children homeless and orphaned.
One day Heyman packed a suitcase and went to Rwanda where, in 2008, she opened Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV), a home to 500 children modeled on Israel’s flagship youth village, Yemin Orde, which originally took in children who survived the Holocaust.
Heyman told the couple she needed $2 million in annual donations to run ASYV and that’s when Abramowitz had his idea to build a solar field at ASYV and sell the electricity produced to surrounding villages, thereby covering ASYV’s expenses. Inspired, Abramowitz decided to form an international company to build solar fields in developing countries that would supply low-cost, clean energy.
Thus a circle was closed: Abramowitz, who in his school days had won a prize for a solar model he built, and Susan, active in international adoption, are working together on tikun olam, repairing our world.
Abramowitz says his profits from EGC will be reinvested almost completely in building and running orphanages around the world.
“We’ll approach local governments and ask for land for a solar field and commitments to purchase the electricity produced thereby. In exchange, we commit to building an adjacent orphanage, and we’ll fund its operation from the field, ” he said.
EGC is headed by Abramowitz and managed by Howard Rodenstein, while Hofland, Rosenblatt and Ira Green of Raanana are founding partners. Once again, they set out to raise the first $4 million from friends and family. They are now in full capital-raising swing, having already raised half the sum with average investments so far of $50, 000. They will continue their funding drive until Passover.
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