What Happens When 50 Organizations Sit Around One Table - A shared Learning Day hosted by ICAR Collective in partnership with the Lion Family

On October 29, 2025, something unusual happened in Tel Aviv.

50 organizations, big and small, national and local, clinical and community-based, chose to pause their day-to-day work and sit together for a shared Learning Day hosted by ICAR Collective in partnership with the Lion Family.

Most of the people who showed up were CEOs, executive directors, founders, and senior leaders who carry the weight of their organizations every single day. Having this group in one room is not common. 

For six hours, the room became a kind of test case for something Israel desperately needs: collective action in a moment of national trauma.

The goal was to focus on one central question:

What will it take to build a coordinated mental-health ecosystem that can carry Israel through the next decade and not just the next month?

Why We Gathered

Prof. Eyal Fruchter laid out where Israel stands one year after October 7, and the picture was hard to ignore. We are living through a mental-health crisis that is deep, long, and far more complex than anything our systems were built to handle. There is no central body managing this crisis. Public awareness of trauma is rising, but the response is still uneven and often delayed. The long-term impact will stay with us for years, even decades, across health, productivity, security, and family life.

The numbers tell the story clearly.

• Trauma rates doubled.

• More than 100,000 people began PTSD treatment.

• Family systems, schools, workplaces, and entire communities are carrying heavy emotional and functional burdens.

• Organizations on the ground are stretched to their limits, doing critical work without the infrastructure they need.

  
  

And it isn’t slowing down. Research from other mass-trauma events shows that symptoms often peak a decade later. We are only at the beginning.

The takeaway in the room was simple.

No single ministry, NGO, or hospital will solve this alone. The challenges we face are not organizational. They are systemic. And systemic problems require systemic solutions.

That is why we gathered. Because if we want to accelerate healing, we have to shift from parallel efforts to shared action. We have to move from each organization doing its best on its own, to a coordinated network that learns together, plans together, and makes decisions together.

Starting With the Hardest Work: Trust

Before we talked about strategy or policy or programs, we began with something more fundamental: trust. Gila Tolub, Executive Director of ICAR Collective, led this session because she knows from experience that collaboration only works when the people leading it trust each other at a real, practical level.

Gila introduced the Trust Equation and broke it down into four parts: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and keeping your own agenda low. Seeing it laid out made something click in the room. These are the ingredients that allow leaders to work together, especially when the stakes are high and the pressure never stops.

People opened up quickly. They talked about burnout, the weight of responsibility, the fear of not doing enough, the challenge of navigating slow systems, and how easy it is to lose credibility or reliability when everything moves fast. They also acknowledged how rare it is to show vulnerability in a room full of peers who are also carrying national-level stress.

The session reminded everyone that building a coordinated mental-health ecosystem does not start with documents or joint plans. It starts with the relationships between the people in the room. If there is no trust, nothing moves. If trust is strong, collaboration becomes possible.

This conversation set the foundation for the rest of the day. It helped shift the mindset from “my organization and my challenges” to “our system and our shared responsibility.”That shift, more than anything else, is what makes collective action possible.

What Organizations Are Actually Facing on the Ground

Before the learning day, 46 organizations filled out a short survey. Almost all of them described the same pressures. The field is still in crisis-response mode. Organizations are working with soldiers, supporting bereaved families, and running trauma-focused programs for children, parents and teachers. Communities have undergone deep changes since the war, with new populations arriving, others being displaced, and many living with ongoing uncertainty.

At the same time, the organizations are being pulled toward long-term resilience work. Almost half are focused on community prevention strengthening local leadership, emotional first-aid groups, and rebuilding social networks that were shaken over the past year. Others are developing digital tools, expanding remote care, or testing new therapeutic models.

The work itself is becoming more complex. Families are arriving with intertwined needs: trauma, financial strain, parenting challenges, grief, and day-to-day instability.

• 55 percent of the organizations report a shortage of staff.

• 32 percent point to systemic barriers.

  
  

Across every question, one message came through: we want to work together, but we need the system to make it possible.

Three Tracks, One Ecosystem

To make the conversations practical, we split into three learning tracks. Each one focused on a different layer of what Israel needs now, and each brought together CEOs and senior leaders who rarely have space to think about these issues together.

• Track 1: System Change and Public Policy

  
  

This group included organizations that want to influence national mental-health policy and improve coordination with government systems. A big theme was the gap between frontline reality and the slow, complicated structures of ministries, hospitals, and public agencies.

Leaders asked very direct questions:

• How can we speak in one coordinated voice so the government actually listens?

• How do we adapt our language to match the way ministries make decisions?

• How can multiple organizations work together toward a shared policy goal instead of every group advocating alone?

They identified two main capability needs: better tools for public engagement and storytelling, a stronger understanding of regulation, government processes, and where influence is actually possible.

This track was honest about the frustration, but also about the opportunity. If civil society wants long-term change, it needs shared strategy, not parallel efforts.

• Track 2: Organizational Excellence and Sustainability

  
  

This track brought together organizations trying to grow internally while meeting rising demand.

The leaders here are grappling with the same pressures: building stronger teams in the middle of a staffing crisis, managing budgets while demand keeps increasing, and adjusting programs quickly based on what is happening in communities.

The questions were practical: 

• How do we divide roles in a way that protects staff from burnout? 

• How do we design programs that can adapt quickly without losing quality? 

• How can organizations share financial tools, templates, or models instead of reinventing them?

  
  

The capability needs that came up most were: financial planning and budgeting,  program adaptation and design, and better internal communication and digital skills.

In simple terms: these leaders want to stabilize and strengthen their organizations so they can sustain the work for the long haul.

• Track 3: Integration and Shared Service Pathways

  
  

This track focused on something everyone in the room struggles with: coordination.

Organizations want smoother service pathways for families, soldiers, and communities, and they also want to avoid duplication.

The key questions were:

• How do we build shared referral pathways that actually work?

• Which programs or services should be aligned across organizations?

• How do we co-design interventions for families who are dealing with multiple challenges at once?

  
  

The capability needs included: creating shared processes, designing joint programs, and improving how information is passed between organizations.

This group represented the heart of collective action: making sure people don’t get lost between different services.

Three Things Everyone Agreed On

Even with different missions and populations, the themes were the same.

The crisis is far too big for silos. Everyone feels it. CEOs especially. No one wants to work alone anymore.

Collaboration needs infrastructure. Not just intentions. Shared pathways, shared definitions, shared data, shared narratives. Israel needs a long-term mental-health strategy. Not a temporary project or an emergency budget. A multi-decade plan that matches the multi-decade trauma curve.

Where We Go From Here

By the end of the day, each group shared its main priorities and the areas where they want to build stronger capabilities. We left with dozens of concrete ideas that can turn into real initiatives: shared advocacy efforts, joint trainings, pilot projects, a national intake template, and better coordination models.

The next step is straightforward. We will organize these ideas, form small working groups, and begin testing what’s actually workable on the ground. The feeling in the room was pretty consistent. People don’t want to tackle this alone. They want to move forward together.

A Final Reflection

One participant summed it up quietly at the end of the day.

“This crisis forced us into the same room. Now we get to choose what we build together.”

That sentence feels true far beyond this day.

What we build next matters. If we choose it together, if we build the right structures, if we protect the people doing the work, Israel can come out of this with a mental-health system that is stronger, smarter, and more compassionate than what existed before.

Relationship by relationship. Structure by structure. Step by step.

We have work to do, but we also have partners for the road ahead. And that makes all the difference.