Bill Strickland is behind schedule. He's got a world to save and 196 more Manchester Bidwell-style facilities to build and he wants it done yesterday.

That's why he's leaving tomorrow for a five-day trip to Israel with a delegation from the United Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. Mr. Strickland has a vision and he sees it happening in Israel.

It's hard to fault his eyesight. The North Side native has turned the Manchester Bidwell Corp. concept of attitude and leadership into a darling of the social enterprise world. Admirers include Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, the Dalai Lama, the Harvard Business School and the MacArthur Foundation, which awarded him a "genius" grant in 1996. His new book is titled "Make the Impossible Possible."

Mr. Strickland, 60, has been working on the same premise since he was 19 and a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh: He wants to help people get along and provide a way for them to succeed.

One reason he'd like to locate a center in the city of Karmiel, in the Misgav region of northern Israel, is that it is an official sister city of Pittsburgh.

Another is the region's long-standing relationship with the UJF. The nonprofit group's Partnership 2000, now in its 12th year, is Pittsburgh's direct people-to-people connection to Israel through a multitude of joint projects in areas of social affairs serving youth and teens, economic development and enhanced educational opportunities.

A third is that it has a significant population of at-risk youths and unemployed and underemployed adults, both Jews and Israeli Arabs. In addition, the region has a large number of Russian and Ethiopian immigrants.

But Mr. Strickland has one more reason for embarking on his trip tomorrow. It is, he said, to fulfill his "very strong spiritual connection to Israel."

"I want to check that out when I'm there," he said. "I have a deep connection with the Jewish community in Pittsburgh."

He credits the late Frieda and Karen Shapira, among others, with helping foster his ties while contributing to the initial success of Manchester Bidwell.

"This trip will be the perfect intersection," he said. "I can pay back my debt to the Jewish community, connect to the spirituality of Israel and play out my strategy of bringing [Manchester Bidwell] to 200 locations around the world."

It's a long way from the ramshackle row house on Buena Vista Street where he opened a center in 1968 to help urban youth to learn the rudiments of making pottery.

Now, an estimated 1,200 students pass through his 63,000-square-foot center and office building in Manchester annually, and 2,500 more young people are enriched through programs in the Pittsburgh school district. About 85 percent of high school seniors in his arts program pursue higher education.

A staff of 150 handles classes, runs the 44,000-square-foot greenhouse and conducts specialized job training for adults.

It's all about spirit, he says. That's why his North Side facility has been so successful bringing blacks and whites of all socioeconomic backgrounds from across the city into a gorgeous building filled with encouraging staff.

"People are born into the world as assets, not liabilities," Mr. Strickland said. "You create centers of affirmations and you get affirmations. You build prisons, you get prisoners.

"You build beautiful surroundings for people and you outfit it with motivated faculty, good food and good cultural experiences -- then you can teach them chemistry.

"If we can get a center going about reconciliation between Arab kids and Jewish kids, that'd be great."

In addition to his wife and 6-year-old daughter, he will be accompanied on the trip by Jeffrey Finkelstein, UJF's president and chief executive officer; Mark Frank, chairman of the UJF's community and public affairs council; Jeffrey Cohan, the organization's director of community and public affairs; and Tsipy Gur, director of advanced education for the Agency for Jewish Learning.

The itinerary includes meetings with two of Israel's leading philanthropists, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the mayors of Karmiel and Misgav.

Mr. Frank, a Downtown attorney who has known Mr. Strickland since the mid-1970s, said the secret of his work is helping people respect themselves so they respect others.

"If you could take this program and put it in Israel and get people to work together and develop this self-respect, wouldn't it be interesting if they realized that, hey, they're just like me," Mr. Frank said.

Mr. Strickland says the cost of replicating a Manchester Bidwell facility is about $1 million. The model already has been established in San Francisco, Cincinnati and Grand Rapids, Mich.

He has visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, Kyoto, Japan, and San Jose, Costa Rica, to scout potential international sites, and talked with officials in Mexico, Brazil and Great Britain. But his dream may take root first in Israel.

"I want to plant a seed in Israel to grow into a big tree," he said. "This could."