Since 2004 many hundreds of children, aged 4 to 16, have participated in our projects throughout Israel, from Me'ilya, on the Lebanese border in the north, to the Bedouin town of Rahat in the south.
In 1998, Freddie Krivine, President of the Israel Tennis Association, was troubled by the lack of Israeli Arab players. In response, he established a committee to introduce Arab children to tennis and to introduce Jewish and Arab children to each other through tennis.
Today, the Initiative, re-named in his memory, manages after-school tennis programmes, introduces Arab children to tennis as part of the elementary school curriculum, it runs holiday tennis camps and it ensures the training and development of professional coaches.
Tennis teaches team spirit and confidence, and through the Freddie Krivine Initiative it encourages integration and equal opportunity for Israeli Arabs in Israeli society. The Freddie Krivine Initiative nurtures Jewish/Arab co-existence events through the development of tournament teams representing their villages. It integrates with local Jewish clubs and players in regular tennis programmes, and arranges frequent Jewish/Arab partnership on the courts at local and regional tournaments,