“I grew up in the Jewish-Arab city of Ramle. Witnessing the socio-economic disparities between the two groups, the poverty, and the drugs, gave me this drive to make our society more just.” (Maya Layton, Shatil’s new director of consulting and organizational development)
Just two months after October 7, Maya Layton stepped into a new role. After six years as an organizational consultant, she became Shatil’s director of consulting and organizational development. Maya, along with Shatil staff, faced the unprecedented challenges supporting NIF grantees and partners as they scrambled to respond to the gamut of needs in the field in the wake of the atrocities of that dark day. These ranged from filling voids in humanitarian assistance, such as housing and food for displaced families, to ensuring that tensions between Arab and Jewish communities did not erupt.
Meanwhile, amid all of this critical work, cold winds have been blowing through the offices of Jewish-Arab NGOs: “For the first time, shared society organizations are grappling with real divisions between Jewish and Arab staff members that are impeding their cooperative work on projects,” Maya said. For example, one NGO senior staffer conducted post-October 7 “check-ins” with employees on issues that included the question of whether or not they supported Hamas, an action which resulted in staffers reporting that they felt unsafe to express themselves within the organization. Another NGO staffer reported feelings of anxiety when people accused their organization of spending more time and attention on the hostages than to civilians in Gaza.
In an effort to help employees and prevent the destabilizing events of October 7 from jeopardizing organizational sustainability and the entire social change ecosystem, Maya and her team of Shatil organizational consultants are guiding NGOs through the crisis. Integrating one-on-one psychological support for staffers into organizational consulting packages is helping staff members cope with the fear and trauma that are fueling frictions among colleagues. Shatil consultants offer a “debriefing” tool that provides CEOs with a clear structure for the facilitation of team discussions in which participants are encouraged to share from personal experience and refrain from offering advice to others.
Social change organization staffers also face the challenge of what Maya calls “activism burn-out”—a feeling of overwhelm plaguing the social change arena as a whole after months of, first, pro-democracy protests, and now, the war. Employees report difficulties simply getting to the office, let alone creating a work plan within a constantly changing political milieu. Through Shatil training and consulting sessions, NGOs are learning how to reprioritize, day by day, and focus on setting and reaching their goals while also knowing that they can, and sometimes should, pivot. Givat Haviva, for example, changed its yearly workplan from bi-national educational activities to separate workshops and seminars for Arab and Jewish schools in light of the situation.
Looking beyond the crises at hand, Maya has set long-term goals for her department: She wants to increase Shatil cross-departmental collaborations and foster more joint strategic planning among grantees. She is also working to diversify the services that Shatil offers, including introducing trainings that will help them use new technology for data collection and analysis. Shatil is in the process of hiring two Arab-Israeli organizational consultants to increase team diversity.
“I’m so proud of my team members and their professionalism. We know how to give organizations the courage to push to the next level, and we constantly finetune and integrate new information into our consulting.”
Maya Layton holds a B.A. in psychology from Bar-Ilan University, and an M.A. in organizational consulting from the College of Management Academic Studies. She resides in northern Israel in Kibbutz Gazit with her three children.