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.

The resulting discussions involve complex Jewish and democratic values.  In order to aide these discussions Yesodot has developed materials aimed at high school students to help them understand:

What is the discussion about?

What are the Rabbis talking about?

Is this racism?

Is there a conflict here between Judaism and democracy?

The materials developed to be used in the classroom are designed to help students understand the issues at stake and assist them in forming their own opinions.

From our internet statistics we know that over 200 educators opened all of the materials in a fashion that indicates their intention to use them.  This hit level (over 200 out of 750 subscribers) is considered very high in terms of internet usage.

Please follow the links to the Yesodot website to see examples taken from the educational kit.

In many places around Israel various drop out prevention programs and models are operated by multiple players – the Ministry of Education, the local municipality and non-profit organizations. MENIFA’s unique initiative emphasizes the importance of coordinating all these different programs and solutions. The main goal is to train agents of change within the educational system. These agents can then focus on the teen and his or her needs and on how to better use the resources of the educational system and municipality to help the specific needs of each teen. The training program meets once a week for 12 weeks and offers participants a full and rich program including group work (in small groups) and practical work with a teen. More detailed information can be found on our website in Hebrew and will soon be found in English as well.

Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated by a Jew  14 years ago. Could it happen again?

Despite the passage of 14 years since the Rabin assassination, Yesodot’s work continues to be vital. A recent YNET Survey found that 40% of the Israeli public does not commemorate Rabin Memorial Day and of the religious Zionist population 33% commemorates the death of the Matriarch Rachel on Rabin Memorial Day!

51% of the religious Zionist population believes that their sector — not the peace camp and not all of society– but they alone, were hurt the most by the political assassination since they are the ones continually accused of encouraging violence for political gain. Shoshi Becker, Yesodot’s Educational Director, points out that these results make one question whether the religious Zionist population is attuned to the pain of the other segments of society.

When asked how to improve matters, most of those questioned said that we must educate non-stop for tolerance and against violence toward the different sectors of Israeli society. This is the exact message that Yesodot continues to spread through its in-service training programs for religious teachers on Judaism and democracy and through its innovative curricula in Talmud, Jewish Thought and social studies for religious elementary and high school students.

With the help of skilled facilitators, religious elementary and high schools throughout Israel made Yom Rabin Memorial Day a day to focus on the importance of democracy and the rule of law. The central message of the day was “Yes To Protest, No To Violence,” even when the government makes decisions that conflict with your deeply held beliefs.

To watch the video about Yesodot’s programming click here!