"What you are asking for is impossible, but we will carry it out", The story of GIMI’s origins

“Maybe you shouldn’t write that I started in my basement, alone with a few followers that believed in the idea,” said Dr. Yossie Shevel, President of Galilee International Management Institute (GIMI), “It sounds crazy.”…. It was crazy.

Today, GIMI has 18,000 graduates from over 170 countries, tens of international partners and countless agreements with local and national governments. The organisation employs a permanent staff of nearly 100 people, not including the guest experts who come to lecture from all over Israel. Dr. Shevel himself takes many trips abroad throughout the year to meet with senior government officials, leaders of international organisations and graduates (some being those very officials and leaders themselves). However, it took belief in crazy ideas to get here and we are here to stay, thanks to the fact that Dr. Shevel continues to do crazy things.

In 1986, when he was developing new programmes for Haifa University’s International School, he sold a course in Mexico and flew a number of lecturers abroad to carry it out. The programme awakened university politics and conflicts, as the lecturers who were not chosen, became offended. Dr. Shevel understood there and then, that he could not carry out the capacity building programmes he had been dreaming of within the university framework.

Dr. Shevel set out to deliver such programmes privately, with the help of a few friends who were just as excited by the thought of sharing Israeli knowledge with the rest of the world. These believers were Major General (Ret.) Dr. Baruch Levy, still Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Dr. Nathan Tirosh, now Dean of the Institute and Academic Director of a number of programmes. And, yes, he really did start in his basement, with the help of a telephone and a fax machine. It was 1987.

2015, Dr. Shevel and Major General (Ret.) Dr. Baruch Levy
with Hon. Dr. Allan J. Chiyembekeza, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, Malawi

In the beginning, Dr. Shevel lectured, scheduled other lectures and study tours, and functioned as the Registrar. “There were times that I accidently scheduled two lecturers at the same time,” he laughed. He quickly understood that he had to find more staff to take care of the logistics and administration. “First of all, I added Sofi,” he said nostalgically. Sofi Sadaka, today is a central figure at GIMI: the beloved Director of the Administration Department. “There is a management model that describes the both of us. I am the messy one with the ideas and she is totally organised. We complete each other.”

2006, Dr. Shevel and Sofi with GIMI staff 

When asked what made him believe that it would work, he answered simply “Optimism”.

He believes that Western Europe cannot offer developing and younger countries what Israel can offer. “They don't have our water struggles, for example. So they can teach the theory, but they cannot show how dairy farms and crops are blooming in the desert, like participants see on our study tours.”

Dr. Shevel believes in people. He believes in the wonders of education and hard work in creating progress. He himself has a great deal of national pride. Though he is critical of the current politics in Israel, he is proud of the young country’s history of development and of the spirit of the Israeli people in researching, innovating and creating better social conditions for themselves. He desires to help others develop their own sources of national pride, including our neighbouring Palestinians.

Despite complicated visa and political issues, from the onset Dr. Shevel has been working with Palestinians, bringing together participants for courses on the development of agriculture and other aspects of their economy. Just this week, a programme opened that brings together Palestinian and Israeli agriculturalists to create joint businesses.

Dr. Shevel remembers with pleased amusement what one of the Academic Directors told him recently, regarding another grand request, “What you are asking for is impossible, but we will carry it out.”

2018 Dr. Shevel and Sofi with only a fraction of GIMI staff today

Everyone who works with Dr. Shevel has found themselves raising an eyebrow at one idea or another. Many times they really do take shape and become real, and sometimes not! He tells with honesty of hard times too, when the number of participants in the programmes dropped because of global economics and of agreements that were forgotten or not implemented. But there are enough times that it works and enough graduates who have shared their success stories, to keep this place alive. The many graduates, with their own ideological missions, who have come here and used the knowledge they received to implement and develop amazing projects of their own, are truly sources of pride for their own communities and for the institute alike.

Without seeing the parallel himself, the courses Dr. Shevel’s institute offers emphasise a daring approach to management, one that gives a central place to innovation and the ability to see what does not yet exist, along with a management style that holds people accountable and values hard work, motivated by values. We have been seeing the results.

“Kadima,” says Dr. Shevel to us at the end of every meeting. The word means “onward” in Hebrew, carrying the connotation of “let’s get to work!”