The newspaper business may be in dire straits but I’m still one of those people with a daily subscription. I like to hold the newspaper, flip through it and re-read certain sections. And when I go away, I share this now old-fashioned habit with people I don’t even know.

In Israel, you don’t just freeze your subscription when you head off on vacation. Instead, you can donate it.

The newspaper companies have a list of charities, hospitals, old-age homes, facilities for youth-at-risk, rehabilitation centers and homes for the disabled just waiting to accept your newspaper for the days you’re away.

Anyone who has spent time in any one of the places listed above knows that having something current to read to pass the time is a godsend.

As such, my to-do checklist before I go away always includes donating my subscription.

I found out about this initiative about 10 years back when I called to freeze my payment. Until then I had only given away old, out-of-date magazines to libraries, hospitals and schools.

The customer service agent told me about this program. Though I remember doubting the idea at first – I assumed it was too good to be true and that somehow I was going to be charged double – I agreed just the same.

Instead of delivering the newspaper to my address it goes to someone available to read it. It’s a win-win situation – the newspaper keeps its readership up and the person going away gets that fuzzy warm feeling of doing something for the good.

Although I do not travel all that often, when I do go away, I always call to offer up my newspaper. And every time the agent thanks me profusely (even if he is reading a pre-written blurb) and notes that it’s not something everyone does.

Which – in my mind – can only mean that people just don’t know about this project. Who wouldn’t want to give away a newspaper they’re not going to read anyway?

As for those who aren’t going away but still want to recycle their newspapers and magazines: Schools and kindergartens love old magazines for art projects, and animal shelters will almost never turn down old newsprint.

“Building your startup is a daily struggle,” says the 35-year-old co-founder of Geekmedia, which operates Geektime, the largest tech blog In Israel, as well as the two-year-old startup accelerator VentureGeeks.

“Knowing that you made a difference, even in only one person’s life, is the reason we continue to create and our motivation to succeed,” she tells ISRAEL21c.

Bar discovered her inner geek while serving in a highly regarded military computer unit, and later earned certification as a Microsoft systems engineer. Raised in suburban Ramat Gan north of Tel Aviv, she also earned a law degree and worked for the Ministry of Justice in specialty areas such as digital signatures and children’s online privacy rights.

ISRAEL21c e-chatted with Bar while she was in New York in April for the all-important TechCrunch Disrupt conference, along with every other serious geek from across the globe.

ISRAEL21c: Do Israeli women feel comfortable and welcome in the high-tech world?

Moran Bar: Being a woman was an advantage, in fact, as the clients remembered me. But the struggle for an equal salary, and to be treated the same way as men in my profession, were in fact obstacles I had to deal with on a daily basis as a young woman.

I21c: What was your goal in starting Geekmedia, Venturegeeks and Geektime?

MB: We (my partner Yaniv Feldman and I) started the company and blog after we discovered that the niche of the tech world was not being covered by tech people. The big newspapers deal only with the finance side, and startup reviews were made only by foreign blogs. We brought the tech world, with our own unique perspective, to the Israeli audience. When a geek writes about technology, it is so different than a writer writing on the same topic.

I21c: What accomplishment makes you feel most proud?

MB: I think that we have created a different blog, and most important – a great and welcoming home for the tech community. Today, we are a source for breaking news from Israel to all of the major blogs and important media worldwide. As a company of seven people, we are financially stable and I’m very proud of my team.

I21c: Where do you see yourself in five years?

MB: We are now on the verge of expanding internationally, with an English version that we are planning to launch at the end of May. I look forward to seeing where I will be in five years. As the tech world is a very dynamic one, who can predict the future? We are busy in creating it right now.

I21c: Why the trip to New York?

MB: New York is the capital of media. I’m here to make sure that everyone that needs to know, will know about the Israeli startup scene and about Newsgeek being the best place to get the information about leading companies from Israel. Later this year we will make some big announcements on that matter.

I21c: Please share some details about your family.

MB: I come from a supportive and humble family, which helped me understand from a young age that I can accomplish everything I wish for and want. A supportive family is the foundation of everything great that I’ve done in my life, and I feel lucky to have a loving partner, two brothers and parents who give me the energy to keep on doing what I love doing.

I21c: How does your “Israeli-ness” impact your business and personal style?

MB: Personally, I’m very ambitious and focused on the success of anything that I do. I believe that me being an Israeli also has a part in the fact that I’m a survivor — which is crucial in the startup world. I think that being an Israeli is all about having the right connections and friends everywhere. It’s a very powerful and united community that will be there for you wherever you go.

Mapal (“waterfall” in Hebrew) just announced a second round of financing and its first sale in the UK of its unique sewage treatment solution. Mapal’s flagship product, custom-built, aerates bacteria in wastewater treatment plants so that human waste can decompose more quickly and efficiently.

It was an uphill battle getting into the British market, which is privatized yet conservative and resistant to change, Fisher tells ISRAEL21c candidly. He and his team of seven are therefore especially pleased by the sale of an installation to Anglian Water, a UK utilities company serving more than four million people in Stanbridgeford, north of London.

Another UK installation is soon to follow, says Fisher, and he hopes these two deals could lead to a landslide of business in the UK, where about 2,000 aging open-pond sewage systems need upgrading to stay in line with new environmental standards.

The Israeli solution fits what are called “excavated biological reactor ponds” and lagoons where fine-bubble aeration was not a viable solution before. Mapal also upgrades larger reactors.

Risk-free, money-saving answer for old plants

Mapal’s aeration system, which floats on top of sewage ponds, is an estimated 70 percent more efficient than existing solutions, according to Fisher. Installing it requires no down time for utilities, and results in lower energy costs to operate the plant.

“Most of the world is using open lagoons and open reactors. In the UK [the systems] only have one biological reactor. The operators have two options when they need to repair or build a new system: they drain and shut it and clean it, while only then installing fine-bubble aerators.”

But what to do with the sewage that keeps getting generated when the plant is down?

“They can construct another reactor for the flow over … but with our solution, there is no downtime, nor is there a need to shut down the plant. We are not saying that we are the only company providing a solution, but our main advantage is that we are the only one that is modular.”

Mapal’s approach has a “green” spin as well, since it prevents environmental pollution from seeping into rivers, reservoirs and the sea whenever upgrades or maintenance is done.

News of the Anglian Water deal comes on the heels of a fresh UK investment round of about $2 million from Charles Street Securities (CSS) Europe to help Mapal further penetrate the British market. This follows a $2 million round by CSS in 2010, two years after the founding of Mapal.

Funds from the recent investment will go toward further marketing in the UK as well as three other regions outside of Israel, where the company has installed 30 units.

Low-tech, high-tech partnership

Large factories, such as paper mills, are often required to provide their own wastewater treatment plants in Western countries, and now in China as well. The Mapal solution can provide a lower-cost solution to companies that need to improve the quality of their effluent, claims Fisher.

Mapal also provides industry and municipalities with a mobile unit that can be put into action after a sewage spill or natural disaster that results in dirty standing water in ponds.

With no moving parts, the low-tech Mapal system is paired with high-tech management systems, making it suitable for rural and undeveloped regions and countries, asserts Fisher.

Mapal is based in Nesher, outside of Haifa, and is preparing to open a UK office. The company’s installations can be found in Israeli cities like Ramat Hasharon, Netanya and Yokneam; and near Johannesburg, South Africa; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Peru; Angola; and Congo, says Fisher.

The company is currently negotiating to treat sewage in additional regions of South Africa and South America, as well as in India.

Shalev is taking ISRAEL21c to see the newest student village started by the Ayalim Association, a grassroots movement to build up the Negev and the Galilee by establishing communities of university student volunteers. He is the organization’s vice president for partnership development.

“Each village is a whole different story,” Shalev continues, walking into a cobblestoned alley toward the formerly condemned apartment house that Ayalim renovated for the two dozen student residents. “This is the only one where we’re the only Jewish people around.”

Ayalim’s strategy is to get students physically and emotionally invested in needy communities in the southern and northern peripheries of Israel. “These areas comprise 80 percent of Israel’s territory but produce only 8% of its economy,” Shalev explains.

“The students receive [full] scholarships to university and discounted rent, and in return they come to live in places like this and give eight hours a week, or 500 hours a year, to the community.”

While ascending the old, uneven stairs, he explains that the mayor of Acre requested that Ayalim establish a village here, based on the success of its three other projects in disadvantaged neighborhoods in northern Israel.

Ten Ayalim villages are thriving down south in the Negev. The organization started there, in a fading kibbutz called Ashalim. That was in 2002. At the time, Ashalim had just 15 families left. Now there are 150, as the students’ community-building efforts made Ashalim attractive to young families.

A better Israel, one community at a time

Up in Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border, Ayalim has a village of 80 students in a neighborhood formerly plagued by crime and drug dealers.

“We got about 25 apartments and hundreds of us came to renovate, build gardens, clean the street from garbage,” says Shalev.

They also opened an Ofarim Center, the after-school clubhouses that are a staple of Ayalim villages. Children can come for free to get help with homework, learn values-based lessons and participate in activities run by Ayalim students and other Israeli national service volunteers.

“At first, only drops of kids came. With time, the word spread that kids were having a good time and parents started volunteering too, something we try to encourage everywhere,” says Shalev. “We want to persuade any young Israeli family to come to the communities we work in, and having a free after-school center is a big incentive.”

Today, the Kiryat Shmona neighborhood is still poor, he says, but the mayor tells them it is safe and clean for the first time.

This is the goal for the Ayalim village in Acre as well, once the students gain the trust of their Arab neighbors.

“Everyone at first was more or less hostile to the students,” Shalev says. “They have lots of issues here and we made it all worse at first. But after a couple of years, they gave us a better place for our Ofarim Center, in a mosque. In the afternoon you’ll see lots of kids there, all Muslim.”

“Parents tell us their kids wait eagerly to come,” says site manager Eyal Maccabi.

Neta, 24, an Ayalim student majoring in criminology at nearby Western Galilee College, supervises the Acre Ofarim Center four afternoons a week. She says it’s a slow but steady process to change ingrained attitudes.

“It has to happen slowly. We paint with them, clean with them, work together to make their place nice. I think in five years people will appreciate us more,” Neta tells ISRAEL21c.

Recently they raised donations to buy kites for the local children and staged a kite festival for which they charged one shekel.

“We are apolitical, but we believe the only hope for coexistence is by communicating together on the very basic, personal level,” Shalev says.

Ayalim alumni villages

Ayalim was founded by former army buddies Matan Dahan and Dany Gliksberg along with Dahan’s sister, Naama. They used their military discharge grants as seed money. Today, Ayalim is supported by Keren Hayesod (United Israel Appeal), the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish National Fund, private donors and the Israeli government.

Each village runs a for-profit enterprise, such as a pub. In Acre, the seaside location had obvious tourism potential, and the students converted several apartments into a youth hostel.

More than a decade into the project, some 5,000 students have “graduated” from Ayalim villages, says Shalev. Nearly 1,000 new participants were accepted this year from a field of 5,000 applicants.

Possibly the best barometer of success is the fact that 85 percent of Ayalim graduates have chosen to settle in the areas they served. Many want to remain a cohesive group, so Ayalim builds them housing. The 19th such alumni site was recently completed at Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev.

“After people finish Ayalim, they become social entrepreneurs with a different point of view,” says Shalev.

“Coming into this process in which they work hard physically and socially, they have no other choice but to fall in love with the Negev and Galilee. Every time you put people in a difficult situation, they have the potential to become better.”

This process begins with building the villages themselves.

“Twice a year, we gather all Ayalim students and [pre-army volunteers] and employees to build or renovate a new village. You work and sweat together, and you also build a connection to the place, to yourself and to others.”

Fishing boats, ancient stone buildings, art galleries, mosques, churches, ethnic cuisine and clothing all build on the breathtaking backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, as you can see in this ISRAEL21c video. Click on the video to view.