Spotlight on Maslan (מסל״ן) — The Negev’s Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Support Center

Maslan (מסל״ן) is one of Israel’s nine sexual assault crisis centers, and it carries a uniquely vast mandate: supporting survivors across the entire Negev region. In practice, that means responding to people spread across long distances, with fewer nearby services, fewer available therapists, and far fewer “backup options” when someone needs help urgently.

In a conversation with ICAR Collective, Karin Zawi Lowenstein, Maslan’s CEO, put it plainly: “We cover 60% of the State of Israel’s territory… from Kiryat Gat to Eilat.” She described the operational reality of being the address for the South: “At 4PM, when welfare is closed, we continue to provide a response to residents of the South who need our help and accompaniment.”

According to Guidestar data from 2024, Maslan operates with 14 salaried staff and, importantly, 173 volunteers—showing a heavy reliance on volunteer contributions to sustain its work. This volunteer base is central to Maslan’s program delivery and community presence.

What Maslan does

Maslan describes its core mission as providing “assistance, practical aid and emotional support” for survivors of sexual and domestic violence, and for their close circles. The organization has been active since 1988. It operates an emergency assistance line that runs 24/7, to provide anonymous and professional support.

Karin framed Maslan’s work as both immediate response and long-term accompaniment. “We give assistance, we give a response,” she said, and stressed that Maslan intends to “continue to provide a response 24/7.” She also highlighted how deeply operational the work is—engaging with survivors, therapists, staff, and volunteers, all while holding the administrative burden of running a nonprofit that is expected (by the public system) to function like essential infrastructure.

Maslan’s model also includes a substantial prevention-and-education, reflecting an approach that tries to reduce future harm, not only respond after harm occurs. Karin explained the organization wants “assistance to speak with education”—two core departments that must work as one. Her goal was cultural change, not only services: “We need to repair our society. We need to talk about sexuality correctly… This isn’t shameful. We must teach our daughters and our sons… to respect boundaries.”

The impact: essential services, under strain

The most concrete measure of Maslan’s impact is that it is a constant, dependable address for survivors in the South—especially when systems are closed, overwhelmed, or simply too far away. But there is a cost of being that address.

Karin described the structural challenge of delivering mental health support in the periphery: longer waits, fewer providers, and greater distance from inpatient beds. “It’s very, very exhausting—long queues… especially for mental health services,” she said. And she named the stakes: “it is about the soul—if you don’t treat it in time, we put a life in risk.”

That urgency is not theoretical. Karin said Maslan is already seeing increases in demand, with spikes around national events: “We see an increase in contacts… on days when hostages were released and on days when there are funerals… We worked here nonstop.” She connected these patterns to how collective crises can delay personal help-seeking: she shared a story of a survivor who explained why she waited—because the country’s grief swallowed individual pain: “We were so busy with the grief, with the sorrow of the state, that we put ourselves aside.”

Maslan also appears to be building a stronger data backbone for this reality. Karin noted that the organization documents activity in Salesforce and can generate detailed (de-identified) reports: “We document every single thing… even the smallest ‘beep’… We have very detailed reports.” That kind of operational data matters—because it can turn lived experience into evidence for policy, funding, and planning.

Sustainability: doing the state’s work, on unstable terms

One of the most vivid themes that Karin raised is that crisis centers are asked to function as part of the welfare system—without the stability a state service would normally have.

According to Guidestar (2024), government funding accounts for less than 25% of Maslan’s budget. They must raise the rest through earned income and philanthropy.

Maslan offers trainings and workshops—such as sessions for employers and designated officers responsible for preventing sexual harassment—both to expand prevention work and to stabilize revenue. The organization earns roughly 950,000 NIS in self-generated revenue. 

This means Maslan must consistently secure nearly three-quarters of its operating budget outside of government support—a challenging and high-pressure model in a sector where needs are constant and often urgent. But the underlying frustration is structural. Karin described how sexual assault crisis centers can become “intermediate financiers” for public responsibilities, forced into annual funding tests and bureaucratic vulnerability: “There’s no logic… we do the work of the state; it’s the state’s job.” She gave a specific example of how a funding refusal created a crisis: a previous application was rejected and “1.2 million was erased in one second,” leading her to spend two months just learning and untangling the bureaucratic mechanisms.

This is why her ambition goes beyond fundraising. She called for a national plan or government decision that formally defines who the crisis centers are and what they provide—so that the system cannot keep relying on them while treating them as optional.

What Maslan hopes to build next

Karin’s one-year vision was unusually concrete: she wants every local authority in the South to recognize Maslan, trust Maslan, and choose Maslan—both for survivor support and as a preferred provider of prevention trainings. “I would like our presence—so that each of our municipalities will know and understand who Maslan is and what they do,” she said, adding that she wants authorities to include Maslan in their budget considerations and purchase Maslan’s “shelf products,” especially trainings.

She also described a practical financial target that is mission-aligned: not “profit,” but a model where at least the education arm can “feed itself,” with income aligned to expenses—enough stability to stay focused on survivors and prevention rather than constant survival-mode fundraising.

Finally, Karin emphasized modernization: updating outdated work mechanisms, learning from peers, and exploring new tools—she explicitly referenced AI as an example of how processes can be shortened and improved. The point was not innovation for its own sake, but strengthening a professional field built over decades: “There is professionalism learned over more than 35 years… and it’s important to preserve it.”

Maslan’s spotlight is not only about what it does today. It is about a regional backbone organization trying to hold a huge geography, rising need, and an overstretched care ecosystem—while pushing toward prevention, professionalization, and a more stable public mandate. In Karin’s words: “We need to connect, to join hands… There isn’t another option.”