Giving Compass' Take:

• OZY profiles Derrar Ghanem, a 28-year-old entrepreneur raised in the West Bank who wants to connect social engineers in Palestine and the diaspora with the resources they need to succeed.

• From a nonprofit yoga center to environmental lessons for schoolkids, there are many promising programs within Ghanem's crowdfunding orbit. Will they have enough money to last beyond the initial startup costs?

• Read more about the power of proximity in social entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

A program unique in the Arab world to teach schoolchildren about water conservation and environmental stewardship is off the ground. An Olympic hopeful, who taught himself how to sprint on a rundown high school track using YouTube videos, snatched up aid to train ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games. A teacher at a nonprofit yoga center got the training to develop an extensive Arabic yoga curriculum. The money and the expertise to do it all came from the crowd, via the fast-growing platform of BuildPalestine.

By linking 12 million Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora, 28-year-old Derrar Ghanem is connecting social entrepreneurs with the tools they need, while shifting perceptions of the Palestinian Territories. But through the haze of ongoing strife, it’s hard for anyone to see beyond what is widely recognized as an Israeli occupation of large parts of the territories.

Born in Athens to a Palestinian father and a Greek-American mother, Ghanem was raised in the city of Jenin in the West Bank. His father, a farmer, struggled to secure a loan to buy equipment. It’s why two years ago he was struck by Besan Abu-Joudeh’s idea to start a crowdfunding platform. At the time Ghanem, a political science and philosophy major at Birzeit University, was managing a co-working space called Work Factory in Ramallah.

Read the full article about Derrar Ghanem crowdfunding solutions for Palestine by Danielle Issa at OZY.