Monthly Archives: December 2015

MiniActive – Empowering Arab Women by Cultivating Community

The MiniActive network of over 1,000 Arab women in East Jerusalem has made a name for itself in empowering the community to demand services (see here and here). At the same time, empowerment is building community in a variety of ways, including enriching and fun activities. The MiniActive network has an abundance of those as well. Here are just a few examples:

A group of 20 women has been participating in a baking course. They’ve been learning a wide variety of decorating techniques, from whipped cream to fondant and its multiple possibilities. Nothing like a Spongebob Squarepants cake – Yum!!!

Spongebob cake and emotocons

Sponge Bob cake and emoticons

There is also a crochet group, as well as a makeup class.

Learning to Knit & Crochet

Learning to Knit & Crochet

And finally, the women have also been able to enjoy trips outside of Jerusalem. In November, we took 100 women on trips up north, to Acco and Rosh Hanikra. Just look at the views they enjoyed…

Group picture Rosh Hanikra

Group picture Rosh Hanikra

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continuing support of this program.

Training the Trainers in Cultural Competency – Reaching the Peak of Project Development

We’ve been working in Cultural Competency for a long time – 8 years to be exact. Our work has run the gamut of both deep and broad – our work at the ALYN Rehabilitative Hospital in Jerusalem included not only training all personnel in the principles of cultural competency, but also ensuring that signs and forms were translated into a number of languages, as well as enabling medical interpretation in a number of languages. Our work with the Israel Ministry of Health led to the directive that required all health care institutions to become culturally competent. We worked in individual clinics and HMO’s on the national level. We’ve been developing, together with the Bar Ilan University Department of Interpreting and Translation, training films and a training guide to use with the films. The guide was recently completed, which led us to the next natural step – a training the trainers course.

Training the Trainers Class Picture

Training the Trainers Class Picture

The course was a 5-session workshop – 40 academic hours – that ran from November 5 – December 3, 2015. It included 15 participants from all over Israel, including 5 Jerusalem representatives – from ALYN, the Jerusalem Center for Mental Health, Hadassah Mount Scopus, Hadassah Ein Kerem and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Participants came from a wide variety of fields within the health care system – social work, occupational therapy, nursing, admissions officers, instructors in nursing schools and more. Two participants had already been our students – in medical interpreting courses for professionals in mental health fields.

The course was based on the short movies and the instruction handbook that were produced over the last two years. The course included skills on how to facilitate training workshops, cultural competency workshops that are based on the movies or on case studies that the participants bring with them. The course was such a success that we are already planning the next one – hurry and sign up, before it is full!

Go to Top