MERCHAVIM was established by its former director, Mike Prashker, in 1998 as an Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO) to create a fairer society for all Israeli citizens through shared citizenship education. Development of the Model by the "MERCHAVIM Group" The new Director is Esti Halperin who previously devoted over a decade to creating the educational content at Merchavim. The shared citizenship model and the spaces of shared citizenship teaching kit, which is central to MERCHAVIM programming, were originally developed by a diverse group of Israeli teachers from all 4 school streams: Jewish secular, Jewish-religious, Ultra-Orthodox and Arab-Israeli. This group represents a microcosmos of Israeli society: men and women, Jews and Arabs, secular and religious, center and periphery, left and right, new immigrants and veterans, physically healthy and handicapped. The group worked hard to overcome deep disagreements and to create a consensual shared citizenship vision based on shared values and common interests. Each member of the group was given the time, place and space to express verbally and in writing his or her feelings of "personal" and "group" identity. Over a period of 18 months, beginning in 1999, the group's efforts focused on learning about each other, understanding each others’ distinct and shared ideas relating to their Israeli citizenship and agreeing the basic building-blocks of MERCHAVIM’s unique shared citizenship education approach. The unique program development process and the innovative and widely consensual shared citizenship education approach that it generated were to a large extent made possible through the uniquely diverse make-up of the original program development team.