by Pamela Deutsch

Ido was born in 1968 inTel-Aviv-Jaffa and grew up in Bat Yam.  It was only at the age of two and a half, that it was discovered that he was hard of hearing.  As he was a premature baby, the doctors and nurses kept telling his parents, who already had twin girls, that he wasn’t talking because his development was delayed.   Ido was close to three when he received his first hearing aids.  He was sent to a nursery program run by Micha where the first goal was to teach him how to read.  By the age of three and a half he was reading fluently and soon after learned to speak.  Ido was mainstreamed into theBat Yam school system from the beginning.  However, hearing aids then were not what they are today.  The hearing aids themselves, which were large and drew attention were connected to a box that rested on his chest in a special undershirt.  He was the only hard of hearing child in his elementary and high school and he was not acquainted with others who were hard of hearing.

As a teenager, Shema invited him to activities, however most of the kids were deaf and spoke sign language which Ido did not.  His high school years were particularly isolating, as he was not one of the hearing and not one of the deaf.  Having attained a full matriculation certificate, Ido volunteered for the army, because as someone with a disability he was not drafted, and served in the intelligence corp.  The army opened up new worlds for Ido and was a wonderful place to meet new people.  Having grown up in a very homogenous atmosphere, this was Ido’s first opportunity to meet a greater variety of people; people from different places, backgrounds, levels of religious observance, etc.

After he finished his service, Ido began to explore what to study.  Ido’s father, after having met Prof Jerry Reichstein, who was then the head of the program for special education for hearing impaired children at TelAvivUniversity, suggested that Ido meet with him.  It was Prof. Reichstein who sent Ido to talk with an organization called Keshev, an Israeli organization for the hard of hearing which existed for 10 years between 1982 and 1992. It was at Keshev, where Ido met for the first time, other people who were like him.  But not right away of course.  Ido, having remembered what it was like to go to Shema activities was reluctant to attend social activities at Keshev.   However, one day he received an invitation for folk dancing which was something he really liked and for the first time he met people like himself… people who are hard of hearing, who use hearing aids, and speak orally.  Ido was sure he was going to meet and marry someone who was hard of hearing.

At Keshev, Ido learned that he was eligible for all kinds of services from the National Insurance Institute.  The NII’s first suggestion was that he undergo vocational testing. The testing agency made two suggestions, accounting or warehouse logistics, both of which require very little interpersonal communication.  Ido’s stab at learning bookkeeping lasted for all of three months and his study of architecture, met a similar fate.  However, private career counseling was more successful and through that process he decided to study cinema and television atTelHaiCollege.  It was at Tel Hai when Ido asked the head of the department about whether as someone who was hard of hearing he could study cinema – he was told that this was not the air force and his medical condition was not a basis for acceptance or rejection.  In fact, the head of the department used to send students to Ido saying that he could be there sound man – he did not relate to Ido as being disabled at all.

Ido completed his degree program and began working for the Israel Association of Community Centers as a coordinator for community television in Kohav Yair and Ramat Eliyahu. It was during this period that the Beit Berl College opened a Bachelors in Education program in Informal Education particularly for community center workers.  Ido attended the program and attained his BEd.

During this time Ido was busy not only with work and school.  When he returned from Tel Hai, Keshev had folded and Ido decided there was a need to provide information for the hard of hearing.  Ido began producing a newspaper the “Faxiton” which was distributed by a number of organizations for the deaf and hard of hearing.  This was in the years before the internet became popular and the paper was often passed from hand to hand.  Ido would receive feedback and responses to the articles from all over the country.

In 1997, Ido joined Prof. Reichstein, Avi Blau, Dr. Becky Shocken and Ahiya Kamara in the founding of Bekol – a membership organization for the hard of hearing.  Ido was active as a volunteer in promoting accessibility, and in 2002 began to work for the organization. Three years ago he became the CEO.  Being CEO has been a learning experience and Ido is always learning how to better fulfill this role.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ido is married to a women who is fully hearing whom he met through a mutual friend.  Today they live in Tel Aviv with their daughter and son.

by Pamela Deutsch

Talia was born in Switzerland and made aliyah with her family at the age of five.  At the age of seven, the family moved to Nigeria, where her father worked for the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva.  At the time, there were quite a few Israeli families living in the area, and there was even an Israeli school with two grades per class.  Later Talia attended a boarding school in Nigeria; however when the Nigera-Biafra war broke out, in 1967, Talia and her family realized that she would not be able to go back to school in Nigeria and so she attended the Kfar Yarok boarding school in Israel.  When her parents moved back to Israel, Talia still had two more years of school and she then finished her high school education in Ramat Gan, graduating from Ohel Shem.

As an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Talia served in the Intelligence Corp, and during the 1973 war as a casualty officer in her unit.  Upon finishing her service, she began to study English and French at Hebrew University, but her studies were interrupted by the needs of her growing family.

While raising her family, Talia held a wide variety of positions including serving as an officer in the Israeli Police Force, a teacher for natural childbirth and breast feeding counselor, directing the track for front desk personnel at a hotel school, and working as a tour guide at Hadassah Hospital.   When Talia was pregnant with her third child, she began studying social work at Hebrew University.

Having completed her BSW Talia began working at the National Insurance Institute with widows, widowers and terror victims. Over the next few years, Talia attained a MSW from Bar Ilan University in clinical social work, studied psychotherapy and bibliotherapy, and attained the credentials necessary to become a qualified social work supervisor.

In 1994, she left NII and opened her own private practice specializing in bereavement and family counseling.  During those years, she volunteered as an ambulance driver. In 2001 in response to the Versaille disaster, when an events hall collapsed during a wedding, Talia voluntarily created a support group for the bereaved families under the umbrella of the Jerusalem municipality.  Other professionals in the field recognized the work Talia did, and she was invited to join a new initiative – the Israel Trauma Coalition.

Initiated at the height of the second  intifada, the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), started with the support and through the auspices of the UJA Federation of New York, in partnership Dr, Danny Brom from the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psycho Trauma,  had the express goal of bringing together service providers in order to improve services for terror victims.

What began as a small initiative of seven organizations and two projects has turned into a partnership between 40 organizations that together aim to create a continuum of care for victims of trauma and their families.  The Coalition concentrates it efforts in three areas – direct care, team training and support, and emergency preparedness for local councils and teams.

To mention just a few important milestones for the ITC – commitment to those living in the Gaza region including the development and implementation of 5 resilience centers;  involvement before, during, and after the Gush Katif evacuation; creation in the last two years of regional training centers in order to provide more effective training and services to local councils, as well as the establishment of a regional network of care givers.  Overseas, the ITC has been involved in providing solutions, for example, after 9/11 involvement in the bi – national project on early childhood, provision of training for local trainers in Sri Lanka, Beslan and Checnia at the request of UNICEF, post Katrina in Louisiana, and partnering with the JDC in Haiti, Mumbai and Japan.

Talia was invited to the UN to participate in a small group of professionals who are experts in treating victims of terror.   The professionals focused on the need to acknowledge the experience of those exposed and the need for long-term treatment.

Today the ITC works with 12 government ministries in Israel and the Home Front Command.

Talia has served as Director of the Israel Trauma Coalition since 2006. “Given the Israeli reality, creating and maintaining such a partnership should not be taken for granted, it is very unique but the results are worth it!” says Talia.

The ITC supports itself through providing services to the government and from donations mainly from federations.

Talia lives with her husband in Jerusalem and is the proud parent of four daughters and the grandparent of two.

The café was recently renovated and refurnished with the support of the National Insurance Institute and the Ministry of Health. Over the past year, the café has garnered support from its regular clientele who come to meet friends, hold business meetings, conferences, business events, and celebrations.

In addition to the beautiful views and unique atmosphere, the café also serves as a gallery, displaying wall paintings and sculptures created by Gvanim artists who are coping with psychological and emotional illnesses and who possess talents in the arts. In the future, the café hopes to host art exhibitions and cultural evenings in which professional artists, students, and the general public will participate.
Rachel, who has been an employee of the café since its establishment, said, “It is fun to get up in the morning with a purpose, to see friends, to go to work, and to learn new things.” This routine might seem ordinary; but for people coping with psychological and emotional disabilities, there are times when routine can be straining and challenging. Café Galeria enables people to overcome these difficulties, to develop the self-confidence for employment, and to acquire the skills that will help them to build a foundation for future employment, to earn a living, and to contribute to community life.

The intensity of equatorial midsummer heat that accompanied me into the hanger-turned-arrival terminal abated only when I again landed in Santo Domingo airport two weeks later. The lack of luggage trolleys is perfectly consistent with the lack of a pavement outside the terminal.  I momentarily feared that the sea of greeters, drivers and would-be day workers would forever obscure me from my waiting compatriots but the connection was made and we drove off towards town.

The perception of destruction I experienced in those first minutes was numbing. Later, I saw much beauty in many shades of color, hope, resilience, pride and self- efficacy, but along those first kilometers it was all rubble. Rubble not confined to the destroyed buildings on the sides of the “roads,” but the roads themselves and most things on it: the rows of huts and tents lined up as dwellings on the road divider; the throngs hanging in and off the sides of the pickup trucks-turned human-transporters and the tent cities themselves. There was one remaining green area in Port au Prince: that behind the fence surrounding the collapsed Presidential Palace. But every other patch of open space, the green that breathes life into London, New York and Jerusalem, is now a ground cloth to tarp-touching-tarp tent cities.

But soon I began to feel the life and the energies which characterize Haitians. Not only do people emerge from those tents every morning, cross the rubble and set off in a direction, they do so with an indescribable air of purpose, resolve and pride. The children are immaculately dressed in their school uniforms, the adults in clothing pristine as in Milan.

This is the spirit to which volunteer organizations must connect in order to contribute anything of value to Haitian recovery. Of the some 6000 not-for profits operating in Haiti today I fear too many come with their own agendas and their own perceptions of what Haiti needs.

I was sent as part of a Trauma Response and Community Development training team by The Israel Trauma Coalition and Natan: The Israeli Emergency Response Coalition. It was done with the backing of the AJJDC International Development Programs – the division of “the Joint” that supports non-sectarian disaster relief. The strength of the program lay in the fact that the organizers did not send us there with clear instructions on what to teach or even with whom to work. This emerged from the needs we heard from the students and professional we eventually worked with.  I believe that because of this approach we received the following kinds of feedback:

Now we know how to help ourselves, and after that how to help others.

I like the way the trainers encouraged us to participate at the seminar.  It was mostly dialog between us.

I know now when someone is traumatized, because someone can be traumatize and not even be aware of it.

We should have got this formation earlier, if we had it, we would had perceived the earthquake differently.

Our lives have entirely changed. Our relationships with others, the way we understand ourselves, we have become more self-confident.

Tikum Olam is the Jewish value that most inspires my life: professional and personal.  My experience in Haiti reminds me that meeting another with compassion and sincerity leaves both enriched.

On Monday June 14, five Israeli NGOs published a unique position paper entitled “Working Today to Narrow the Gaps of Tomorrow”. The paper details the serious gaps in the health of various communities in Israeli society: between Arabs and Jews; between Ethiopian immigrants and the general population; between income support recipients, and others. The organizations found that the Arab and Ethiopian communities as well as recipients of income assistance suffer from various ailments to a much greater degree than the rest of the population.

The paper outlines the principles of a social policy designed to reduce the gaps in health status and in health services. In it, the organizations call on the Prime Minister to initiate a multi-dimensional national program to reduce health gaps. The organizations also propose quantitative goals and steps to realize the plan.

On June 14, participating organizations held a press conference in Tel Aviv to launch the paper. Photos of the press conference are available for free use on ACRI’s site (click on the links).

Barbara Swirski, Director of the Adva Center: “Israel must join developed states in working to reduce health disparities. Despite efforts by the Health Ministry and health funds to this end, Israel’s health policy does not include concrete steps to reduce the gaps. Israel must channel the information provided toward the formulation of a national health plan to reduce health gaps.”

Dr. Nadav Davidovitz, Chair of the Center for the Study of Health Policy in the Negev at Ben-Gurion University: “In contrast to the accepted perception, health services are not the most influential factor in people’s health; rather the most important factors are the environment and human behavior. As such, the Health Ministry must lead the process of reducing health disparities in cooperation with other ministries and authorities.”

Fekadu Gadamo, Executive Director of Tene-Briut for the Promotion of the health of Ethiopian Israelis, detailed the difficulties facing various minority populations and communities within Israel in terms of language and the lack of culturally appropriate health services. Tene-Briut attempts to reduce the discrepancies through translation services and by adapting services to the needs of Ethiopian Israelis. “The Health Ministry must adopt these programs,” Gadamo said.

Mohammed Khatib, Director of the Health Rights Center at the Galilee Society, detailed the connection between environment and economy, and health. “Arab citizens, most of whom reside in Israel’s geographic periphery, suffer from the inequality in health services, availability of medical equipment, and infrastructure,” he said. “A national program to reduce health disparities must include cultural adaptation to various communities as well as the provision of pre-conditions to good health.”

Read the full report in English online.

Normally, a week’s notice is required to find an interpreter. In this case, Chaim worked wonders – he managed to find an appropriate, available, local interpreter who could do the job and she too sprang into action. She went immediately to meet with the Deaf man and accompanied him in the ambulance from the city he lives in to the hospital in another city. From 8:00 pm until 2:00 am she stayed by his side, enabling him to receive all the information about the transplant and the risks involved, to answer his questions and concerns which ultimately allowed the operation to take place. Later that morning she was back – from 7:00 am to noon continuing to interpret for him and for his deaf wife as well.

For this Deaf man, who had waited over two years for an appropriate kidney to be available, this service meant the difference, literally, between life and death. His situation had deteriorated to a critical point, and the transplant, which was successful, came just in time.

Events like this are just one facet of the institute’s government awarded mission to provide support services for all Deaf and hard of hearing Israelis.  Services facilitated include Israeli Sign Language interpreting, computer assisted note-taking and reimbursement for the purchase of vital equipment. Practically speaking, this means that all Deaf or hard of hearing Israelis who need (and are entitled to) interpreters for any purpose, contact Chaim and he matches them up with an interpreter. The volume of requests is staggering – in 2009 there were over seven thousand requests. Interestingly, about a third of these interpreting assignments met needs in the field of access to health care. From 2008 to 2009 there was a 40% increase in the number of interpretations. There was also an increase in the number of requests for equipment.

* A capital D for Deaf indicates that the man is culturally Deaf and is a sign language user.

After 4 years of hard work, out of the 32 Hebrew chapters, 20 are complete and 12 are in various stages of preparation. Ten Arabic chapters are complete and 22 are in various stages of preparation.  The book in Hebrew should be published in June 2010. Initially, we intended to publish the Arabic edition a year later. Instead, we have decided to publish the Arabic version in three parts. The first part, including 10 chapters will also be published in June 2010. We feel that it is essential to get this information out due to the general lack of accessibility to information of this kind within the Palestinian community.

Israel’s State Comptroller report from 2004 revealed that although every child is entitled to the national dental health basket, only 25% of school students in grades 1 to 9 receive state-sponsored dental checkups. The reason for this is that Health Ministry regulations stipulate that local authorities be the providers of dental treatment. As this decision is left in their hands, only affluent local authorities have take on this mission, while more than half (58%) do not provide any such services.

Bolstered by this victory, ACRI intends to continue our struggle to ensure equal access to healthcare for all members of Israeli society.