How Uri Poliavich combines entrepreneurship and philanthropy: the Yael Foundation’s education programs, support for kids, and long-term community initiatives.
Every company hires from the community around it, relies on local infrastructure, and depends on people who went to school somewhere nearby. Uri Poliavich, an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, treats that dependence as a two-way street. In his view, part of a company’s success comes from society, and part of it should go back. Most of what he gives goes to education and to projects that make communities more stable. He counts that work as part of being an entrepreneur, on the same list as building products and hiring people.
What Communities Give the Business Environment
Growth figures tell only part of the story about a place to do business. A company also needs well-trained people, infrastructure that works, and a local economy with enough activity to keep it going. Schools play a big part here, because the skills employers look for, and the habit of picking up new ones, start in the classroom. When a community supports its schools, local businesses usually feel the effect years later, once they start hiring the graduates.
Uri Poliavich’s approach to entrepreneurship brings together three areas: innovation, corporate culture, and social responsibility. Innovation drives product development and better work processes. Corporate culture sets the principles of collaboration inside the company, while social initiatives make it possible to apply business experience to projects that matter to society. The idea of creating a charitable foundation took shape as the business grew. He wanted to help children stay connected to their community. Later, he put forward the principle that business growth should serve the foundation’s needs and guide the foundation’s priorities. This way, charitable work became one of the guideposts for Uri Poliavich’s business decisions.
Education as a Tool for Developing Talent
Education opens up opportunities for children that go well beyond the school curriculum. It helps them develop their abilities, connect with peers, and discover their own interests. This area sits at the center of Uri Poliavich’s philanthropy: instead of separate short-term initiatives, he has focused on supporting educational institutions and programs.
In 2020, Uri Poliavich co-founded the Yael Foundation, which supports the education of Jewish children and helps them stay connected to their cultural heritage. The organization’s work covers 145 institutions in 48 countries, and its educational programs reach more than 29,000 children.
The foundation works with children of different ages through several learning formats:
- Preschool programs.
- School education.
- Sunday and after-school classes.
- Summer educational camps.
Social Stability and Community Development
A school does more for a neighborhood than teach reading and math. Parents meet each other at school events, talk with teachers, and end up working together on projects for the class or the building. Over time, those regular contacts turn a group of families into a community. The programs Uri Poliavich supports through the Yael Foundation give families more of these chances to meet and work together. Cultural heritage is usually passed down at home first. Schools add a second channel: children study the history, language, and customs of their community in a structured way, alongside regular subjects. That helps them see where they come from and how they fit into the culture around them. The educational initiatives supported through the Yael Foundation are built around this idea and add classroom learning to what families teach at home.
Parents tend to plan their children’s education years in advance, so they look for schools that will still be running when their kids reach the next grade. Steady support matters more here than a single event. Through the Yael Foundation, Uri Poliavich backs programs over the long term, which keeps them open and available to the children who rely on them. For many families, that continuity is what makes long-term planning possible.
The Two-Way Link Between Economic Development and Educational Opportunities
The payoff from education takes years to show up in the economy, and the return flow is just as slow. People with stronger skills find more and better work, and the companies that grow as a result have more to put back into schools and training. Uri Poliavich’s business career and his support for the Yael Foundation connect both sides of that loop. His example shows how capacity built in business can end up supporting projects that a community actually uses.
Charities that work in several countries at once deal with many of the same management questions a company does. In building an international educational foundation, Uri Poliavich has drawn on practices that carry over well from business:
- Strategic planning. Priorities are set several years out, not one season at a time.
- Operations. Someone has to coordinate people and schedules across many schools and programs.
- Staff development. The foundation brings in specialists and helps them grow in their roles.
- Flexibility. Programs are adjusted to fit what each local community needs.
Applying management experience doesn’t mean charitable organizations should measure their results by commercial metrics. For educational programs, what matters is access to learning, the number of children reached, and the ability to continue classes over several years. This is a key difference between the business and philanthropic work that Uri Poliavich combines: day-to-day work can be measured with specific indicators, while the broader impact of education on graduates’ lives becomes visible much later.
Uri Poliavich’s Success as Opportunities Created for Others
As a company grows, an entrepreneur gains more ways to support initiatives beyond their own business. This is about more than resources: it also includes experience, professional connections, and the ability to organize work on complex tasks. Uri Poliavich links the growth of these opportunities to growing responsibility toward society. Commercial achievements keep their importance, but they also open up additional room for work that benefits society.
Uri Poliavich’s philanthropy gives a different way to judge what a business has achieved. The Yael Foundation grew into a separate part of his work, with goals of its own that go beyond commercial measures. Seen this way, the size of a company is one measure of success, and the opportunities its founder creates for other people are another. In Uri Poliavich’s case, growth in business made it possible to back social projects on a larger scale. The results of the company end up working twice: once for the business, and once more as support for schools and programs that serve children and their communities.
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