by Pamela Deutsch

“I have decided to change my personal narrative.  Most Ethiopians including myself usually start by saying…I was born in a small village, I trekked to Sudan, spent a year in Sudan…what I believe Israelis hear that the Ethiopian community is a deprived community.”

Michal is 38 years old, married and mother of two children ages 6 and 3.  She has a master’s degree in educational counseling from the Univeristy of Haifa, was born in Ethiopia,  and made aliyah at the age of 9.

Michal’s family lives in Kfar Saba and Michal attended Ulpanat Tsfira. As a national service volunteer, she worked in the caravan settlement for Ethiopians at Hatzrat Yasaf, where she led parent groups and worked with young children.  Her motivation for doing so, was that she might be able to prevent these parents and children from making the same mistakes she and her family made during the absorption process.

After completing national service, Michal attended the University of Haifa where she studied education.

During her master’s degree, Michal continued working with children and youth, but also held another er position simultaneously;  through the Israel Institute for Democracy, she worked as a research assistant for the Knesset immigrant and absorption committee under the direction of MK Naomi Blumenthal.  After completing her master’s degree, Michal was chosen by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the staff of the Disney Corporation to work in the Israeli Pavilion at Disney World Orlando for a year.  “ I really enjoyed the experience and was very proud to represent Israel, as a black Jewish Israel woman.”

Upon returning to Israel, Michal was looking for an opportunity to work with the Ethiopian community and at the same time to lead change.  She talked with all kinds of Ethiopian organizations.  At Fidel she was challenged to present her ideas and explain how she would implement them. Michal understood that Fidel was an organization that empowered people to grow.

Fidel has two goals to train Ethiopians to be mediators and to empower them so that they will be able to provide good and professional services to the Ethiopian community.  But, more than that, the training provides the employees with skills and opportunities for life.  And this is what turned Michal on!

Michal began working at Fidel in 2000 as the Professional Training Director and over the years her job description expanded.  From 2006 to 2011 she served as deputy CEO of Fidel before assuming the position of CEO in 2011.

Since Michal began working at Fidel, the Ethiopian community has changed – particularly in terms of leadership.  Today, the young people, particularly those in there early thirties, who completed the majority of their education in Israel, and who have made Israeli culture their own, are now the leaders, and they are well able to express themselves on topics such as absorption, education, where resources are needed and where they should be going.  And they are not afraid to ask hard questions. There is no question that the new leadership at times challenges those who became for them.

Just as Michal has changed her personal narrative, she believes that it is time for the organizations working with Ethiopians to change their narrative as well.  Michal has already begun to take a good hard look with her staff and board, at Fidel’s strategy, whether their programs continue to be effective, whether their resources being used in the most effective manner, and how can they as an organization improve and learn in order to achieve the goals they feel are important for the Ethiopian community.

“Fidel since its establishment, has created very strong infrastructures in the communities where it works; our next step is to figure out how to mobilize the children and youth of these communities to become leaders within their own localities.”

Voice of the Child is the only organization in Israel that specializes in the development and implementation of programs preventing sexual harassment amongst children.

I asked Ayelet, how she became involved with this issue?

“While studying for my Master’s Degree in Educational Sociology, I took a seminar on gender and sexuality, and for my seminar paper I wrote about sexual harassment between hotel guests and employees.  During my research I discovered that there was lots of reading material about sexual harassment of adults, but there was a significant gap in information about sexual harassment among young children from a sociological point of view.”

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Ayelet is an 18^th generation Jerusalemite on her mother’s side and her father was from Afghanistan.  She attended the Rene Cassin High School in Jerusalem and served as a teacher-soldier in the Israel Defense Forces.  Ayelet obtained a  BA in Education from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Masters in Educational Sociology from the same institution.

“At that point I decided to drop everything else I was doing, I had been working in at the Hebrew University Research Institute for Innovation in Education, and pursue a doctorate on the this topic.  My next discovery was that there were no sociologists in Israel who specialized in sexual harassment among young children.”  Hebrew University made a few suggestions about institutions where she might pursue a doctorate, but in the end, with three young children in home, she chose the closest option.  In 2004, after 4 years of research and writing, Ayelet received her PhD in Educational Sociology, from Anglia Polytechnic University (APU), England.

After finishing her doctorate, Ayelet did not want her work just to be theoretical but to have practical application, so she approached the Ministry of Education.  In parallel, she formed a nonprofit organization , Kol Hayeled, and developed two educational programs for children from ages 5-8 and 10 -12, that focused on identifying, preventing and coping with bullying and sexual harassment between children and learning to behave with mutual respect towards one another.

The Ministry sent Ayelet to the Department for Gender Equality, where she applied for and won a tender to provide educational programs in secular elementary schools.  This was a four-year contract, and Voice of the Child recently won a second tender for the provision of similar services.

In the meanwhile Kol Hayeled has gone on to develop new programs for children and youth from ages 5-17, which alongside classroom programs that address issues such as safe behavior over the internet, include a play for teenagers that addresses sexual harassment, and which was presented in the Supreme Court last week.

Evaluation of Voice of the Child programs has shown that they reduce the level of violence in the classroom, and raise gender awareness.

I asked Ayelet, what comes next?

“Our next move will include the adaptation of our programs and materials for Arabic speakers and possibly religious populations, and to steadily increase awareness to these issues amongst educators and parents.”

Ayelet is married with 3 children and lives in Mevasseret Zion.

“I’ve learned how to inspire volunteers and how to delegate authority. I’ve learned that an effective campaign is based on three major components: spokesmanship, lobbying and activism. Sometimes it only takes five people, who make a satirical presentation at an entrance to some convention, to make a potent headline in the newspaper the following day. Having said all of this, I must add that, in my opinion, Green Course’s most significant achievement is bringing together young, caring and talented people with good ideas.”

Public Transportation is the main campaign Ram and his volunteers are focusing on at the Tel-Aviv chapter nowadays. Three years ago, one of Green Course’s lobbyists found out about a well thought out plan for improving TA’s public transportation system. This Reorganization Plan(link to Article in Jerusalem Post) was written by Ayalon Highways and forgotten about until Green Course pulled it off of the dusty shelves of the Tel-Aviv municipality and demanded it be implemented without delay. The plan consists of five stages. The first stage was carried out last August, and recently the Minister of Transportation announced that the second stage will be executed this summer.

“Having been born and raised in Tel-Aviv”, Ram explains, “I’m highly aware of the local public transportation shortcomings. There is great satisfaction in hearing on the radio that the Minister of Transportation is committing to deadlines and knowing that it has a direct connection to recent activities and press releases your organization was responsible for. It’s amazing to see how the work of a rather small group of dedicated people from our chapter is able to influence decision-makers and national policies.”

Highlights of their activities include:

For the First Time in Israel: Adapted Community Service Instead of Imprisonment for People with Disabilities

Bizchut has been working for years to promote alternatives to imprisonment appropriate for offenders with disabilities. We are happy to announce a recent breakthrough in this area.

During the past six months, Bizchut together with the Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities held two training seminars for all the staff of the Unit for Community Service, part of the Israel Prison Service.

The seminars aimed to make participants aware that people with disabilities can be successfully employed. Together with Elwyn (an organization that runs employment programs for people with special needs) we showed how employers can be recruited to employ offenders with disabilities as part of community service. We presented the concept of supported activity in the mainstream community for a person with a disability, and the adaptations required for different kinds of disability.

The final seminar concluded with a joint declaration by the Director of Community Service, Bizchut and the Equal Rights Commission to implement a pilot project involving 12 people with disabilities who have been sentenced to community service.  Their placement and employment as part of this program will be accompanied by professionals who will advise on how to provide adaptations to meet their special needs.

The Struggle to Save the Accessibility Law Regulation

In July, the drafting of the statutory regulations governing access to existing public buildings was finally completed and they were brought before the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee for approval.

The Interior Minister Eli Yishai, made his approval of the regulations conditional on over a 100 weaker local authorities being excluded from the regulations, in effect giving them an exemption from dealing with this accessibility, even though it had been agreed in the Knesset Committee that the local authorities would only be obliged to implement the regulations in 2021, 11 years from now.

While some stakeholders yielded to the request concerning exemption of the weaker authorities in order to ensure the regulations would be approved before the recess and subsequently come into force, Bizchut thought otherwise. Together with other organizations and under the uncompromising and strong leadership of MK Ilan Ghilon, chairperson of the sub-committee for the accessibility regulations, we worked to prevent the suggested discrimination. The amendment was rejected and the regulations approved by the Committee. They are now waiting for the Minister’s signature before they can come into force.

Class action against Egged and Dan Accepted

In June the Jerusalem District Court accepted a class action brought by Advs. Kadari, Aharonsohn and Levi on behalf of Reuven Baron, Michelle Lustigman and Bizchut against Egged and Dan companies, in light of violation of their obligation to ensure that local public transportation is accessible to sight impaired and blind people. In its decision, the court ruled that the defendants only partly meet their obligations to install warning lines at the entrance to buses and at the top of stairs and operate internal and external public announcement systems, and do not at all meet their obligations to have accessible signs that show the bus number or indicate stop buttons or straps. In accepting the class action, the court made a precedent setting ruling that enables people with disabilities to bring a wide range of claims in relation to the implementation of the Equal Rights for People with Disabilities Law and its statutory regulations.

More updates can be found in our Activity Report 2009-2010.

According to Shlomit Solomon, the initial idea for this project was based on the numerous phone calls received by the Itim hotline from families (mainly of olim but not only) and hospital staff members who were in a state of great confusion in the day following the death of their loved ones/ patients. Families were overwhelmed by the horrible combination of the desire to drop everything and surrender to their grief- and the need to make many decisions- some of them involving huge sums of money- instantly. Hospital staff members simply didn’t have the crucial information and therefore couldn’t help and give advice.

Again and again we received calls from people saying:

“We thought that burial is for free but are asked to pay 12,000 NIS! Is that ok?”

Or : “The chevra kadisha is telling us we have to make up our minds right now whether to purchase a burial plot for the spouse of the deceased. It’s very expensive! Do we have to make that decision right now?”

And: “Our father is not Jewish according to halacha. What are our choices? Where will he be buried?”

We’ve helped people on a one-by-one basis until we realized that in order to really help, we should help train the staff at the hospitals- mainly social workers who are the ones that are in charge of helping the family when a death occurs- but also nurses and other staff members. When it comes to burial costs and expenses, on many occasions money was spent unnecessarily and can’t be reimbursed, so prevention is crucial. It may seem like a horrible thing to think about at these moments, but for many families these are sums that they don’t have and unfortunately there are many people out there who take advantage of families at these very moments.

During our seminar we cover topics such as: whose liable for burial in Israel, what are the costs of purchasing a plot in advance, what’s covered by the National Insurance Institute and what isn’t, what are the different types of burial used in Israel today, the options for burial available for non-Jews and those who wish to be buried in a civil ceremony, contact numbers in case the family/staff feel they have been given wrong information- and more.

To date, the seminar funded by anonymous donors, was presented to the social workers of the oncology ward at Rambam Medical Center and to the entire social work staff at the Sha’are Zedek Medical Center. On both occasions, the staff was very eager to learn and quite surprised to learn many facts they were unaware of. Itim is working on preparing additional seminars in hospitals and for organizations.

An Enchanted City

This pilot program was created with the support of the Jerusalem Foundation. With help from supporters of the Museum, we hope to expand the program to include children throughout the city.  The program is also being tailored for religious and secular kindergartens to foster tolerance among them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To date Israel has not had a general immigration law. The Law of Return relates only to people who are Jewish, or are of Jewish descent, and leaves the question of immigration of non-Jews as a lacuna, which is covered by a plethora of sometimes conflicting administrative and judicial decisions. This leads both to confusion, bureaucratic arbitrariness as well as infringements of human rights.  The current state of affairs is detrimental to Israel’s vital interests, a situation which is intolerable for Israel as a state and as a nation. Israel needs an immigration policy. In this Position Paper, the authors, for the first time in Israel, propose a strategy for thought and action ahead of the formulation of an immigration policy that promotes Israel’s interests as a Jewish and democratic state.

Metzilah’s publications – mostly position papers – serve to explore the legitimacy and implications of Jewish national self-determination in the State of Israel, as well as of Jewish self-fulfillment around the world. Moreover our publications seek to shed light onto the compatibility of Zionism and Judaism with Human Rights and Liberalism in the context of a Jewish and democratic State of Israel.  The goal is to create a platform for ideological clarification of the presuppositions and validity of Zionism as well for informed public discourse and decision-making.

The papers are meant to serve as a basis of support for decision makers by framing complex issues and providing policy recommendations that will ensure a Jewish and democratic State of Israel, as well as the welfare of the Jewish people. They also seek to deepen the public discourse and sharpen its understanding on issues that are on the State of Israel’s agenda.

The combination of these two rationales contributes to consolidating a consensus among the public and decision makers, which calls for action on these issues.

The expanded course on the Negev includes elements such as the relationship between the center and the periphery, employment and lack of employment opportunities, culture, sectarianism, Bedouins, education, development of the Negev, environment, the new army training city and more.

As the activists who initiated the course have a background in education and social change, the clearly stated goal of the course is to provide knowledge and to examine critically what is going on in the Negev, so that participants will be encouraged to get involve and to take the initiative.  Many of the lecturers, aside from being volunteers are also Negev residents and the organizers believe that interesting relationships and partnerships for change will be developed as the course progresses.

The second course deals with urban issues in Tel Aviv.  The course takes a critical look at issues facing Tel Aviv and the surrounding metropolitan area.  By examining decisions that Tel Aviv has faced in the past as well as possible solutions to current issues, the course hope to give participants an understanding of the complexity involved in urban issues such as transportation; is a subway or light rail feasible, will it solve parking problems, etc.  Other issues to be addressed include green space, involving the public in decision making, and what makes Tel Aviv so special and can other cities learn from the Tel Aviv experience.

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