Civic leaders from Beersheva were in New Jersey last week to thank the Central community for its support of cultural and renovation projects in the Israeli city.

The Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey, through its Mack Ness Fund, has pledged $250,000 to the nonprofit OR Movement — which encourages development in the Galilee and the Negev — for each of two years if it can come up with matching funds.

Over a breakfast meeting at the federation offices on Oct. 17, the OR Movement's founder, Ofir Fisher, expressed his appreciation to the Ness committee for showing faith in the Beersheva project and said his group is well on its way to meeting the fund-raising challenge.

"Your support has been the biggest and the most influential till today," he said. With the promise of that $500,000, he said, it was proving far easier to persuade other federations and foundations to give money. He described the Ness committee's approach as pioneering and entrepreneurial.

Accompanying Fisher were Beersheva Mayor Yaacov Turner; city manager Avishag Avtovi; and the executive director of the Beersheva Foundation, Ishay Avital. The group was in the United States for about a week to meet with potential funders.

Under the Beersheva proposal, the money will go into programs to attract investors to buy up and renovate the many abandoned buildings in Beersheva's Old City and to encourage people to establish restaurants and Internet cafes and to stage concerts and art shows. A music festival this summer drew thousands to the area.

"That is an event you can already take credit for," Fisher said to his Central benefactors.

The Beersheva plan is one of three selected from a slew of proposals to the Ness committee, which oversees the funds left to the federation by Watchung farmer Mack Ness after his death in 2004.

Given its existing sister-city relationship with the Negev communities of Arad and Tamar, the committee decided to use the money primarily for development in the Negev, an area covering more than half of Israel's territory but with just 10 percent of its population.

In addition to the Beersheva project, the committee is initiating two in Arad: one for a center where skilled young adults can find help getting high-level jobs and establishing support networks, and the other to help young adults from underprivileged backgrounds find steady employment or start their own businesses.

In Beersheva, the grant committee found an attractive partner in Fisher and his organization. Committee member Rob Schwartz, speaking after the meeting, said the OR plan "rose to the top" of the proposals they reviewed. He said it showed both potential for major impact and effective leadership.

Eleanor Rubin, cochair of the grant committee with Norman Weinberg, described Fisher as someone clearly capable of carrying out his plans.

Weinberg, for whom this was a fourth meeting with Fisher, characterized him as having "the old pioneer spirit," and as someone willing to work hard and pay attention to detail. On a visit to Beersheva in July, he walked with Fisher through the streets of the Old City — with its rundown Ottoman Empire architecture and narrow alleys — and noted how everyone seemed to know and like him.

Weinberg mentioned that Ben-Gurion University and the other colleges in the city draw more students than either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. "The problem is that [students] leave as soon as they graduate," he said. The OR plan aims to generate the kind of cultural energy young adults seek, so that they will want to stay in the area to find jobs and start their families.

Agreeing with those goals was Miri Hasson, the Israeli emissary working with the Central federation this year, who was present at the meeting. Her family moved to Beersheva a few years ago, and she said she is eager to settle there when she returns — and all the more so given the planned development.

Fisher himself has been living in the Old City for 18 months. He said some 30 people — about half of them students — have already moved in, too, and there are hundreds of houses available for investors to convert to provide more rental accommodations.

Fisher and his colleagues mentioned another project intended to revitalize the city, an effort financed in part by the Jewish National Fund to create a riverfront park where, at the moment, there is a dry riverbed cluttered with rusting hulks of old cars.

Fisher established OR in 2000, together with a group of his friends. Their dream was to serve the country by encouraging development in the Galilee and the Negev, and they have succeeded in establishing themselves as the central information source for people interested in moving to those areas.

In addition to the efforts to keep young adults in the region, OR is also hoping to establish a fervently Orthodox community near Arad, and to create others that will attract people involved in environmental and ecological issues, English-speakers, and members of the security forces. "We have 15,000 families in our database who are in the process of moving there," he said.

On any given day, he said, they have an average of 250 job opportunities listed, most of them high-level positions with companies in and around Beersheva.

Fisher said the Beersheva project is a good example of how government, nongovernmental organizations, Israeli philanthropists, and American and Israeli foundations are working together.

"It's a new model," he said.