Ron Gutman, the co-founder and CEO of US healthcare technology company Intrivo, and the philanthropic foundation On/Go for Good flew to Israel to help directly on the ground, and co-ordinate fundraising efforts for leading civil support and mental health non-profit organisations across Israel.
On/Go for Good
Ron Gutman
As an international healthtech leader, Intrivo, funded the charitable foundation OnGo for Good, to fulfil its mission to give more people access to their most pressing healthcare needs so they can live healthier, longer and safer lives. Immediately when Gutman learned of the tragic Hamas terror attacks against Israeli civilians, he felt compelled to act, and flew to Israel instantaneously to learn about the most pressing unmet needs from the civil local organisations orchestrating the support.
Gutman visited the devastated scene of The Supernova Music Festival (a music festival of ‘unity and love’ attended by Israeli and international citizens alike), which was one of the first targets of the Hamas terrorist organisation, and where 260 people were murdered, making it one of the worst civilian casualty and death catastrophes in Israel’s history.
Speaking on the scene with volunteers who provided support at the Supernova manslaughter site in southern Israel, Ron Gutman said whilst surveying the destruction: “It’s truly unbelievable. It’s really hard to imagine what happened here. Young people came to a festival to sing and dance and celebrate, and all of a sudden, there were shootings and explosions, and people coming to take their lives away while they were trying to escape. Nobody can fathom that outside of a horror movie.”
Gutman also travelled to Eilat where he spoke with survivors who lost family members, neighbours, and friends in the violent Hamas terrorist attacks in their villages. Irit Lahav, a survivor of the attacks that decimated kibbutz Nir Oz, woke up on the morning of the tragic events by the alert sirens of a missile attack. Two minutes later, her neighbour texted to tell her that someone was shooting at their house. Lahav recalls the terror, “We held each other’s hands, and my daughter said to me, ‘Mum, I love you.’”
“The price is very high. We lost half of my family,” Gil Hazut, another survivor of the kibbutz Nir Oz massacre, told Gutman through his tears.
Mental health aid and support for civilian trauma
Ron Gutman has made helping civilians who were directly impacted by the recent events a top priority. Gutman has identified and coordinated with local humanitarian support agencies to make both immediate and long-term impact on the situation on the ground with funding, technology, and matching the local organisations with additional helpful resources in the U.S. One particular organisation Gutman and OnGo for Good have been working directly with is Brothers and Sisters in Arms. Previously a protest group run by army veterans, Brothers and Sisters in Arms has become Israel’s largest civilian support organisation after the Hamas attacks. “In just a few hours, we’ve managed to convert the organisation that we’ve built in the last nine months into a civilian aid and support organisation. Big company people and their supervisors as well as line workers and ordinary folks, they all come here to volunteer… these guys are incredible,” Oren Shvil, one of the leaders of Brothers and Sisters in Arms told Gutman at their Tel Aviv logistics center.
In addition to organisations supporting the daily needs of Israeli civilians and soldiers on the front lines, Gutman sees an immediate need to deliver mental health support to Israelis, which is the reason he’s decided to raise additional funds to support Natal (Israel Trauma and Resilience Center) a leading Israeli non-profit organisation focused on mental health. “People were brutally attacked, their freedoms and confidence were shaken at the core and although they managed to survive the atrocities somehow, they now need a lot of mental help to work through things and recover,” said Gutman. “We’re working to help deploy a group of top psychologists and psychiatrists to help the victims and their families because we believe mental health is the foundation for resilience, recovery, and renewal after the serious trauma so many people have suffered.”
Gutman, who also hopes there would be a way to provide consistent humanitarian support in essential medical supplies to civilians in Gaza (including those unfortunate Israeli hostages in Gaza, but not to terrorists associated with the Hamas) said: “The question is not only how we can help now, but also how we can create a path to a sustainable long-term solutions that will prevent this kind of humanitarian disaster from recurring again in the future. I keep thinking what else we can do to help the situation going forward and because it looks like things are likely to take a turn to the worse before becoming better again we will need to provide better access to medications, medical devices and medical supplies. We’re now working through creating a way to make sure that these absolute necessities in time of war arrive to the people who need them most quickly. It has nothing to do with politics, it has nothing to do with wars, it has nothing to do with armies, nothing to do with any of that — it has to do with who we are as human beings and how we define humanity for all.”
