Grantee Stories

Louise Dubé, Executive Director of iCivics Civic knowledge, understanding, and discourse across the US are in crisis. Explanations and accusations abound about the origins of the problem, but there is consensus on one essential point: Generations of students have not received the education in history and civics needed to prepare them for informed and engaged […]

Honeymoon Israel (HMI) is more than just a romantic trip to Israel. The organization’s tagline —it’s about the journey—hints at the “more.” Honeymoon Israel is indeed for couples, but they aren’t necessarily newlyweds. Participating couples may be engaged, or in a committed relationship, or in their first five years of marriage. A group of 20 […]

Juma—the word for “work” in many African dialects—is a nonprofit social enterprise whose purpose is to employ young people who might otherwise have a hard time landing their first job. Juma’s motto is “It starts with a job.” Juma Youth have dealt with personal challenges. Many of them have experienced homelessness or housing instability, or […]

Imagining a new Zionism for the 21st century The Z3 Project is an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, CA. Promoting a stronger relationship between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, the Z3 project is dedicated to modeling how Zionism can evolve, and how Jewish communities can come together for meaningful discussions about the […]

Over the past several years, the University of San Francisco (USF) has significantly expanded its services and programs related to veterans. This includes support both for students who are veterans and for students who intend to serve the veteran community. The results of USF’s outreach are impressive: The number of veterans enrolled has almost doubled, […]

Get to know the garden experts that make our parks beautiful Jason Martinez and Pat Quinn are gardeners and horticulturists for the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. They met when they were both working at the SF Botanical Garden, and have each been with Rec & Parks for over 20 years. We asked them […]

Ensuring the continuity of Jewish peoplehood has always been one of the Koret Foundation’s priorities. Central to our commitment is preserving and honoring the history of Jewish communities. We first wrote in 2017 about the discovery and publication of Rywka Lipszyc’s diary and the museum exhibition it inspired in Kraków. The exhibition is now traveling […]

Supporting arts organizations and cultural institutions has always been part of the Koret Foundation’s commitment to strengthening the Bay Area community. The pandemic put a hard stop to live performances for over a year, but also inspired innovation and collaboration. We recently caught up with Chris Lorway, executive director of Stanford Live, a longtime Koret […]

“The Children of Willesden Lane” is a true story. It begins in Vienna in 1938, when it quickly becomes dangerous to be Jewish. The heroine of the story is a young girl named Lisa Jura, who dreams of becoming a concert pianist. Her family is Jewish, and her parents are able to secure her a […]

Supporting institutions of higher learning has been a priority of the Koret Foundation since our founding. The Koret Scholars program, established in 2016, provides needs-based scholarships and other support to college students across the Bay Area who face the most barriers to college completion: low-income students, underrepresented minority students, and those who are the first […]

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University are pooling their expertise and resources to develop targeted, personalized treatments for children with leukemia. The disease is usually successfully treated with chemotherapy, but about 20 percent of patients subsequently relapse. Many of these children do not survive. Some […]

Bioinformatics involves developing algorithms and computer software to record and analyze biological data. This young field holds enormous potential for introducing an era of personalized medicine to treat diseases from cancer and diabetes to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. To advance this goal, Tel Aviv University (TAU) and UC Berkeley (UCB) are conducting collaborative research to develop […]