The Portland Trust

The Portland Trust was established  to promote peace and stability between Israelis and Palestinians through economic development. It works with a range of partners to help develop the Palestinian private sector and relieve poverty through entrepreneurship in Israel. It facilitates sustainable economic development through catalysing initiatives to build quality employment and thriving private sectors. Their work advances the growth of strong societies in Israel and Palestine based on socio-economic mobility and inclusion for minorities and marginalised groups. (“Who We Are – Portland Trust”)

The Portland Trust was founded in London in 2003 by Sir Ronald Cohen, co-founder and former chairman of the private equity firm Apax Partners, pioneering philanthropist, venture capitalist, and private equity investor, and chair of the Social Impact Investment Taskforce established under the UK's presidency of the G8, together with Sir Harry Solomon, co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Hillsdown Holdings (“Board of Trustees”).

The other trustees are Mick Davis, Chairman of MacSteel, a global trading and shipping company and an investor, director and advisor to other companies in the resource, technology and financial services sectors, and Nicola Cobbold, who has spent the past 14 years in the not-for-profit sector, with a particular focus on improving outcomes through sustainable economic development and social impact investment. She was also Chief Executive of The Portland Trust itself for eight years, as well as being a director on the European board at Mercy Corps. Also trustees are Jonny Harel-Cohen, of Dynamic Loop Capital, Gila Sacks of the UK Department of Health and Social Care, and Steven Kaye of Baystone Associates Ltd (“Board of Trustees”). Former Trustees include Lord Freud, former Minister for Welfare Reform in the British Government and former Vice Chairman of UBS Investment Banking and Sir Martin Gilbert, who was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford

In June 2005, The Portland Trust opened an office in Tel-Aviv. The managing director is Rami Schwartz. In April 2006, an office was opened in Ramallah under the direction of Samir Hulileh, who remains the Ramallah Chair. Baron Frankal has been the Chief Executive since September 2021 (“Executive Team – Portland Trust”).

Roles
The Portland Trust's work encompasses think tank style research as well as working with local partners and stakeholders and the international community to implement catalytic projects towards improving social infrastructure, health, employment and the Palestinian Tech Ecosystem. Its role is both strategic and impactful on the ground, including work on Palestinian Tech Ecosystems such as an IT programme training up hundreds of computer programmers in Palestine. Portland is also involved in ground-breaking projects in the Sakhnin Valley in Israel in health and medtech creating employment opportunities and training for Orthodox Druze women and Arab youth and Haredi men into hi-tech. Portland also helped lay the foundations of Rawabi, Palestine's first and only master planned city, now home to its newest vibrant tech hub.

The Portland Trust conducts extensive research which it publishes in a monthly bulletin called the “Palestinian Economic Bulletin”, which it has been publishing since 2009 in both English and Arabic, and many other publications, such as “Thinking Portland: The Palestinian Tech Ecosystem”.

Despite the many obstacles and restrictions, Portland remains deeply committed to tangible economic development in Palestine. (“Who We Are – Portland Trust”)

Publications
●      Monthly Publication: Palestinian Economic Bulletin – Portland Trust

●      Thinking Portland: The Palestinian Tech Ecosystem

●      Beyond Aid: A Palestinian Private Sector Initiative for Investment, Growth and Employment

●      Global Palestine Connected Gaza A Spatial Vision for the Gaza Governorates

●      The Role of Business in Peacemaking: Lessons from Cyprus, Northern Ireland, South Africa and the South Caucasus

●      Investing for Peace: The Private Sector and the Challenges of Peacebuilding

●      Economics in Peacemaking: Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina

●      Palestinian Exports: Best Practice

●      Economics in Peacemaking: Lessons from Northern Ireland

●      Financing Palestinian SMEs

●      Beyond Conflict: The Economic Impact of Peace on Palestinians and Israelis

●      Global Palestine Connected Gaza

(“Other Publications – Portland Trust”)

Offices
The Trust has offices in the UK (London), Israel (Tel Aviv) and Palestine (Ramallah).

Projects
The Portland Trust is involved in a range of projects in Israel and Palestine including:

Palestine:

1)    TAP - Talent Acceleration Program - Palestinian Tech Ecosystem

Portland is on track to support 300 jobs in Palestinian small and medium-sized IT outsourcing firms, based in underserved regions of the West Bank through a ground- breaking intensive three-month bootcamp that combines cutting edge technical skills, business acumen and soft skills to accelerate Palestinian developers and ready them for employment.

The programme has an 88% placement rate and includes trainees from East Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as a 67% female participation rate. The programme is part of a broader initiative, scaling up in 2022, to inspire and empower talented college graduates and professionals to develop innovative solutions for real-world problems through advanced technologies, all to help catalyse exponential growth in the sector, leading to the employment of thousands of developers, engineers and others, making a significant contribution to GDP.

(“Current Projects – Portland Trust”)

2)    Development Impact Bond (DIB) for Type II Diabetes

The Portland Trust worked with 150 pre-diabetic women in West Bank refugee camps over a 3-year period with Juzoor, a local public health organisation with a strong track-record of working with women in impoverished areas. The Paltel Group agreed to an outcome payment for the first cohort totalling $150–250,000, with Portland also managing to raise $150,000 investment from the Bank of Palestine.

Impact bonds are outcomes-based contracts where investors provide upfront capital for the delivery of an intervention with clear measurable outcomes specified by a commissioner. The pay-out to the investor occurs if and when the outcomes are achieved, by the commissioner. If the outcomes of this Diabetes Bond are achieved, the Government will make a saving of almost $4 million. This is the first Development Impact Bond of its type in Palestine.

The DIB outcomes assessment is underway. The DIB, alongside events and Portland's persistent advocacy continues to build momentum in the region to explore impact investing, and other organisations working in Palestine, including the World Bank, have built on Portland's pioneering social finance mechanism.

(“Landmark Projects – Portland Trust”)

3)    Design Verification

In order to grow high value added activities in Palestine, Portland identified Design Verification (DV) as having the potential needed based on the global growth in demand for semiconductors, the interest of IT MNC's in reducing DV costs, the supply of Palestinian IT graduates and the keenness of local IT companies to use DV services. 4 IT companies hired 4 recent graduates and progressed them through a three-stage process with technical and practical training and a provider selection process. 240 Palestinian IT graduates now work within the DV subsector and Portland is expanding the pilot project to increase impact. The Palestinian IT sector has huge potential and by 2030 could add $960m to Palestine's economy, and directly employ 20,000 people in high skilled jobs.

4)    Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI)

Portland is working with local and international partners to design industry-driven IT educational and training programs. A VLSI lab gives students and professors access to cutting-edge electronic systems design tools. In 2018, Portland secured funding from the Palestinian Market Development Programme (PMDP) to establish a VLSI lab in the Al-Najah university in Nablus. The success of the first VLSI lab generated interest from Al Quds University and the Arab American University in Jenin, both of which in 2019 got their own VLSI labs with hardware funding from Mercy Corps, software licences from Synopsis and Cadence, and training provided for university professors. 25% of electrical engineering and computer engineering students at three universities have completed the VLSI training. The success of this program has attracted IT MNCs into Palestine such as Intel and Cadence.

5)    Datablock

6)    Palestinian Paediatric Health

7)    Tech Training DIB

8)    Microfinance

The project provided training and technical assistance to microfinance institutions, improved access to business development services for microentrepreneurs, and re-established the Palestinian Union for Small and Microfinance Institutions (Sharaka). In its 3 years of operation 70,000 people were provided with microfinance; Sharaka was successfully re-established, and The Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) became the official regulatory body for the sector.

9)    Affordable Housing Units - Rawabi

Rawabi is the first planned city for Palestinians and the largest private sector undertaking in Palestinian history. Portland worked closely with the Palestinian private sector to design a project to build affordable housing units in new communities across the West Bank, based on demand and affordability, wider economic benefits, land availability & financing. The city has 5,000 housing units across 23 neighbourhoods, and welcomed its first residents in 2015.

10) Loan Guarantees

The project enabled banks to extend credit and affordable finance provision for Palestinian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Designed as a temporary 10 year intervention to address credit system bottlenecks and stimulate lending, approximately 100 loans were approved totalling $147m. The project included a technical assistance programme to help banks market financial products more successfully. The fund was managed by the Middle East Investment Initiative (MEII).

11) Gaza

Following the devastation of conflict, Portland worked with a very broad range of parties led by the Palestinian private sector to produce the strategic Masterplan that was  Global Gaza, Connected Palestine. Portland worked with this group of leading Palestinian businesses to champion a comprehensive long term spatial vision for Gaza that sets out in detail 70 implementable projects with great catalytic potential to create effective change in the underlying economic condition. Businesses committed funding and formed a Coordinating Committee to oversee its development and implementation.

(“Current Projects – Portland Trust”)

Israel:

1)    Lotus Project for Orthodox Druze Women

Based in Daliat El Carmel, Portland supports Lotus, an NGO run by Druze women. The programme is enabling the first generation of orthodox Druze women to break the glass ceiling and achieve employment in hi-tech firms, within a context that enables their traditions to be maintained through working in a women-only “safe space” inside the village. Portland continues to facilitate and mentor Lotus's activity, developing each cohort and matchmaking for roles in the Israeli hi-tech sector. Lotus operates a hub for dozens of women developers and data analysts, who command a high entry salary in leading software companies. The success of the hub impacts the families, the village (each position in hi-tech creates 2 peripheral positions), and the state, as off-shored positions are returning to Israel. A new branch is underway and on track to open in the Galilee within the next year.

2)    Fursa

Fursa provides a scalable solution of quality employment for talented Computer Science graduates from Arab Society. While Arab youngsters represent 12.8% of the total students for hi-tech related first degrees, only 2.3% of the employees in the Hi-tech sector are Arabs. This programme empowers and strengthens this underrepresented population by integrating them into the Israeli hi-tech industry, contributing at the same time to the Israeli economy. Participants are young Arab engineers, graduates of Israeli universities, who are trained and placed in selected hi-tech companies as juniors, at the same time bringing back previously off-shored positions to Israel. Each course syllabus is prepared with input from employers, and includes soft skills training. The success rate in placing to date is 90%. Graduates can expect to achieve an increase in salary within the first 6 months of employment. The programme has 100% repeat employers. Fursa's model is designed to reach sustainability within 2 years.

3)    Masterplan for Employment for Arab Society

The Masterplan for Quality Employment is a joint programme with the Israeli Democracy Institute. It focuses on education, welfare, employment, growth engines and commercial zones. It was extended and adjusted during 2020 to reflect COVID-19's impact. Following meticulous analysis and design, it has been embedded as part of the five-year Government Resolution 550 plan, which allocated 35 billion Shekels to integrate and boost the Arab population's socio-economic status. Implementation is taking place in tight cooperation with the Ministries of Finance, Economy, Education and Equality, the Board of Arab Mayors, and several civil society organisations.

(“Current Projects - Portland Trust”)

4)    Tora v’Daat

This project sees the placement of orthodox Jewish men into hi-tech. The “Haredi” community suffers exclusion from the workforce, due mainly to differences in culture, leading to educational gaps. This situation drives a growing chasm to their integration into Israeli Society. As a result, the community is ranked in the lower economic echelons in Israel. It also results in losses to state income in taxes. This is a new model to integrate young Haredi men into the hi-tech industry, enabling participants to study and graduate with a full BSc degree in Computer Science at the Hebrew University and which guarantees their employment in leading jobs (i.e. core R&D positions), with a very high entry level salary after graduation. Students receive living expenses scholarships (1st year) and loans based on an Income Sharing Agreement model (from year 2), as well as a unique envelope with extra social and academic support, in a programme that spans 3 semesters a year.

5)    Developing a Regional Economic Growth Strategy for the Arab sector in Israel – Sakhnin Valley

Portland is leading the creation of a health and medtech centre of excellence in the regional economic cluster of the Sakhnin Valley in the north, to address the gaps and imbalances between Arab and Jewish communities, and engender workforce integration. The plan will see a new health and life sciences industrial park, creating vast job opportunities and high-quality employment in the area. The project incorporates a medtech innovation combinator in collaboration with MEDX and the Israeli Innovation Authority. The cluster tech plans include a life science and bio-design labs to serve all northern entrepreneurs, a call centre for nurse and pharmaceutical medical consulting, a child development centre and a women's health centre.

(“Current Projects - Portland Trust”)

6)    Growth Engine - Eshkol Hasharon

A master plan for employment will be initiated, the purpose of which is to connect academia graduates living in the cluster to the largest companies operating within the cluster. The implementation of the plan will lead to an expansion of the supply of jobs, high-quality and diverse employment, and improvement of the cluster's assets and the local economy.

Education and Employment – The Sharon Authorities Cluster

7)    Bridges Israel

Portland incubated Bridges Israel, a social venture fund which invests in for-profit, mission-driven businesses in the country's most underprivileged communities, as well as in businesses that aim to impact health, well-being, education and the environment. Today, Bridges has an impressive portfolio including Venn, NDrip, Abraham Hostels and Eco Concrete. The focus now is on finding investible solutions to the climate crisis and escalating inequalities.

8)    Social Finance Israel

Portland incubated Social Finance Israel to act as the country's first social-financial intermediary. It now issues innovative investment tools, such as Social Impact Bonds to attract new capital for non-profit organisations and social enterprises with monetary returns to investors. Israel's first SIB targeted the reduction of dropout rates among computer science students at higher education institutions, and has focused on the prevention of Type II Diabetes, and enhancing maths achievements for Bedouin youth.

(“Landmark Projects – Portland Trust”)

Notable persons

 * Jonathan Kestenbaum, Baron Kestenbaum (born 1959), chief operating officer of investment trust RIT Capital Partners, and a Labour member of the House of Lords