March, 2020 | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Traveling Forward in Jerusalem Kickoff Conference – Moving Multicultural Activism Online

As part of our work in advancing the Jerusalem Covenant in Jerusalem, we’re advancing a number of multi-cultural initiatives to improve everyday life in Jerusalem, including, and especially public transportation.

Public transportation in Jerusalem, event invitation

In ‘normal’ times, is an issue that severely affects all – Arabs, Haredi Jews, secular and religious Jews. Each community has their own unique challenges, but it is a problem that is common to all.

For weeks we’d been planning a major conference for Jewish (religious / secular and Haredi) and Arab activists to come together for a conference on public transportation, which was set to take place on March 23. And then the COVID-19 crisis broke out, and mass gatherings were banned. So we took the conference online.

The conference went online, to Zoom

The meeting was attended by 90 people, including residents and professionals, Arabs and Jews, ultra-Orthodox and non-ultra-Orthodox, adults and young people, residents of Jerusalem from all neighborhoods and city council members. The participants were highly diverse, but their common goal was one – coming together to bring about better public transportation for all Jerusalemites. The fact that many of the initiatives raised were common among the different communities only reinforced the need for such intercultural work, and that this process is the right thing to do. We’ve called this initiative, Traveling Forward in Jerusalem.

Traveling Forward in Jerusalem seeks to create a group of residents and professionals – from all Jerusalem communities – who will work together, and who believe that together, and together with the Ministry of Transportation’s Master Plan for Transportation, these processes will make public transportation more accessible, and more adapted to residents’ needs. We aim to create a situation where residents and Jerusalem professionals influence the state of public transport in the city.

During the meeting, different ideas for discussion and action were raised. Among the initiatives that came up were: Developing an application to help operate public transportation more effectively, access to information for residents, a transport committee in East Jerusalem and more. From here, smaller action teams will focus on specific topics and initiatives. We will mentor and support the teams, and together we will work to promote and develop better public transport in Jerusalem.

It was amazing to see people’s willingness to get involved and discuss public transport in the city, even at a complex time like this, when all efforts are focused on the coronavirus. The responses from the participants were very positive, and the meeting seemed to exceed all expectations. We believe this is the first step in a long and meaningful process in our work in the city.

Here’s a short video (in Hebrew) that shows some of the issues discussed:

And, of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund and the U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Branch Office and U.S. Consulate General Jerusalem for helping us to advance tolerance and cross-cultural activism in Jerusalem.

Naomi Roff2020-05-16T07:32:37+00:00March 30th, 2020|Blog, Effective Activism, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem, Traveling Forward in Jerusalem|

Diversity Management Workshop in Mental Health – for Kfar Shaul

This isn’t the first time we’ve worked with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Kfar Shaul, and with practitioners in mental health. You can read more about our previous work here and here.

On February 24, 2020 we began a series of four workshops, together with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Kfar Shaul, led by our Orna Shani-Golan and Michal Schuster.

אורנה שני פותחת את סדנת ניהול הגיוון בכפר שאול

Orna Shani-Golan at the first meeting of the Diversity Management Workshop in Mental Health – for Kfar Shaul

In these four sessions, we’ll share knowledge, tools, skills, and we’ll hold deep discussions about the implications of diversity and how to include all the identities represented in the organization in its activities.

In the first session, we introduced the principles of cultural competency to the different types of caregivers, administrators, and human resources department, and discussed how they can be used to guide effective responses for the patients, taking into consideration the cultural backgrounds of both patients and staff, which come from a variety of backgrounds. Participants were asked to choose one thing that they’d like to change in order to advance cultural competency at Kfar Shaul, and we’ll help them see it through.

Here’s Rachely’s Hebrew post from the first workshop in late February:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of Cultural Competency since its inception in 2008.

rachelly2020-04-11T14:42:15+00:00March 20th, 2020|Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Another Step in Assimilating Principles of Cultural Competency in the Jerusalem Municipality’s Welfare Department

We’re continuing our efforts to assimilate cultural competence in the municipal welfare department in Jerusalem. We’re concentrating on the western region of Jerusalem, which covers a large and diverse area – from Haredi Har Nof and Bayit Vagan to Beit Hakerem, which is considered a secular neighborhood, to Kiryat Hayovel, which includes a highly diverse population of Haredim and secular communities, to the city center, which also includes a broad spectrum of communities, including asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea.

The Forum facilitatorד at the JICC

The meetings included discussions with the regional director. She is in charge of the welfare offices, the rehabilitation centers, and the training centers. She spoke about the activities of the different professional forums. At each monthly meeting, all professionals from the different neighborhoods meet to discuss the same issue. For example, there are forums that deal with aging, violence, families, authority, eligibility, youth, disabilities and more …

Each forum is accompanied by the forum coordinator and a facilitator, both of them social workers at one of the regional offices. At these meetings, they raise professional dilemmas related to their meetings with clients and the other employees in the region. We decided that this is an ideal forum to advance cultural competency – if each session would also include intercultural aspects that emerging from the cases they bring up they could better assimilate concepts of cultural competency in the different welfare offices and associated centers.

talking about cultural competence with the social workers

The first phase of the process was conducted at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center. At that meeting, held on December 22, 19, all forums and forum coordinators were given tools to examine case studies, raised by the participants from different forums, from a cultural competence standpoint. One of the tools is the three-question model developed at the JICC:

What are the possible interpretations? What possible cultural mores does it touch on?
Have you experienced a similar incident before? How did you act then?
What would you suggest to do at the event presented?

Since then, we’ve worked with them in a number of steps. The second step was work with the forums themselves. Preparatory meetings were held with the director and facilitator of the forum in which they design a meeting with joint facilitation. The third stage is the meeting with the forum itself. So far, we have met with the Authority Forum – employees of the Welfare Department, who are not social workers and who accompany and assist families in various areas. We spoke with them about their ability to be go-betweens, providing social workers with important cultural information on the one hand and those requesting assistance on the other. Another meeting was held with the Eligibility Workers Forum, which is responsible for subsidizing activities and providing assistance to eligible offices. One of the issues raised in the meeting was how to deal with a person who comes thinking that he deserves assistance (after receiving incorrect information from his friends), but in fact is not eligible according to the guidelines, and how our culture meets (and deals with) that of the person who is asking for assistance. Additional meetings have been scheduled with the Social Workers for the Elderly Forum, and the Family Social Workers Forum.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem since its inception over a decade ago.

orna2020-04-18T13:23:03+00:00March 15th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Jerusalem Municipality|

JICC Cross-Pollination – Living Safer, Living Longer and Cultural Competence Training at Sha’re Zedek

We continue to hold Cultural Competence meetings for workers at Sha’are Zedek Medical Center. You can read more about our work with Sha’are Zedek here, here and here.

The hospital continues to provide professional enrichment to those who went through our medical interpretation course. These employees speak a range of languages, including Arabic, Russian, Amharic and French. This time, the enrichment covered preventive health and home safety. Our Aliza Shabo-Hayut, Director of our Living Safer, Living Longer project, gave the lecture.

Learning about preventive health and home safety measures

Living Safer, Living Longer seeks to reduce one of the largest problems in preventive health and home safety – procrastination. We know it’s important to perform periodic examinations and tests for the early detection of different illnesses – periodic examinations by the family doctor, mammograms for women, tests for colon cancer, and more. But the daily hustle and bustle of work and family often get in the way, as do personal and cultural fears. This leads to missing opportunities for detecting serious illnesses early. As part of the presentation, Aliza and the participants shared personal stories of early detection, which saved lives – routine skin examination, detecting of a lump in the breast and more. We hope that the employees will use this information to promote their own health and that of their family members, and serve as ambassadors for preventive health and home safety.

Learning terms, learning about tests

Afterward, we held a practice exercise related to interpretation. The participants learned about the advantages of working on online documents (such as Google Docs), where a number of people can upload and update terms for translation at the same time, to the same document. The translation instructors will review the terms translated on the document so that an accurate, up-to-date and professional file of health-related terms – for children as well as adults – can be created.

We were also happy to see that the hospital felt that the interpreters’ visibility was important as well – new tags have been made for them to use when translating! This is how we advance professional medical interpreting, showing that medical interpreting is indeed an added skill, and not everyone can translate. Well done to the hospital management.

New tags in languages they need

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support for Cultural Competence in Jerusalem for more than 10 years.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:39:28+00:00March 11th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Living Safer Living Longer|

The Jerusalem Intercultural Center – Hosting Bar Ilan’s Israeli Hope in Academia Diversity Forum

The Israeli Hope in Academia is one of President Reuven Rivlin’s initiatives to promote diversity and cultural competence in Israeli society. Although the president’s vision focuses on “four tribes” – four groups in Israeli society that will be prominent in formulating its future (Arabs, secular, religious-national and ultra-Orthodox Jews), but conceptually, this vision is very close to that of the JICC and its work to promote cultural competence in Israel.

Introducing the JICC’s work in cultural competency

Part of the work of the Israeli Hope in Academia at Bar Ilan University, led by Dr. Liat Netzer, includes activities to promote leadership within the university. The Gvanim (“Diversity”) group is a group of senior academic and administrative staff selected to promote cultural competence within the university. Our own Dr. Michal Schuster is part of this group.

Mount Zion as an example to cultural competence and diversity

On February 26, 2020, the JICC hosted this group at its offices on Mount Zion. They began their day at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center with an introduction to the topic of cultural competence. Dr. Hagai Agmon Snir, our Director (and lecturer at the Louis & Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan) presented cultural competency and the diverse activities at the JICC over the past 12 years. Dr. Netzer connected the concept of cultural competence to the mission of Israeli Hope in Academia, and showed thought-provoking examples of the academia’s blindness to student diversity, barriers to students and lecturers from minority groups to advance and integrate as equals in the system, and the motivations to improve the diversity and cultural competence of academic institutions in Israel.

Taking lessons from Mount Zion to academia

Afterward, the group toured Mount Zion, guided by Merav Horowitz, Coordinator of the Window to Mount Zion project. The tour illustrated how partnerships between people and organizations (sometimes those who do not hold official roles) succeeded in bridging disagreements and tensions in a place that is small but holds religious, political, and cultural importance to many, many groups. She described numerous examples of cooperation at the David’s Tomb complex, the Dajani family cemetery, and various events that take place on Mount Zion, sometimes routine and sometimes as surprises.

After the tour, the group met to raise questions and insights about the JICC’s work and how it can be applied to academia.

We were happy to host the Diversity group and to be part of the process of formulating and raising ideas to enhance cultural competency at Bar-Ilan University.

Dr. Rachely Ashwal, a lecturer on mediation at Bar Ilan (and who will replace Orna on her upcoming maternity leave) who is also posted about it on her Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of Cultural Competency since its inception.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:07:32+00:00March 8th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Academic Institutions, Mount Zion|

The Little Prince is Everywhere – this Time, Kiryat Hayovel

The Little Prince is at it again. This time, on Olswanger Street in Kiryat Hayovel.

In February 2019 the Little Prince began a project called “Clean Olswanger St.”

Olswanger Street, finally being cleaned up

They posted on Facebook about how much trash there was on the street, a place where thousands of people live, work and study. (In addition to residents, there’s an elementary and junior high school and six kindergartens on that street.) We developed relationships with local sanitation workers, the municipal enforcement workers (those who give fines for littering, etc.) and landscaping department. We recruited residents, created plans, met, talked, and…… nothing happened – there was not yet enough passion and responsibility at the residents’ side to be a part of the solution. Very frustrating.

Before. This is what people had to live with.

A year went by. The Jerusalem Municipality began to implement its clean city reform, according to which the Municipality would take responsibility for cleaning 1,250 acres of private-public spaces (PPS’s – we wrote about them here). Technically, it doesn’t need to, because, technically, these spaces aren’t city property. But they are public property, and it just makes sense. We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating – thank you to the Municipality as a whole and the different departments involved. This is a groundbreaking move, with Jerusalem being the first municipality in Israel to clean up the PPS. Hopefully, other municipalities will follow suit.

Bags upon bags of garbage

So finally, Olswanger St. is receiving its due. Last week, at the end of February 2020, sanitation crews began cleaning up the garbage that had piled up on the hillsides, on the pathways, between the buildings. Over the first week they cleaned one side of the street and the difference is huge!

Look how many bags the garbage filled!

Let’s hope that this is a turning point for Olswanger Street, for many clean years to come.

After. Hoping for a cleaner future.

Our Tal Kligman posted about this cleaning event in the Little Prince Facebook group. Here’s her post:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:16:07+00:00March 5th, 2020|Blog, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

Santé Israël Raising Awareness about Coronavirus for French Speakers in Israel

The coronavirus – its spread, possible cases in Israel and what to do if you’ve visited certain countries or been at different sites at certain times – is at the top of Israel’s news headlines these days.

Photo Credit: Israeli Ministry of Health site

Santé Israël has been getting the word out to French speakers around Israel.

It has translated directives from the Israel Ministry of Health, and published updates since its outbreak a few months ago. This post, from January 30, was among the first giving instructions in French:

It is important to note that the information doesn’t include medical / scientific information about the virus itself. We’ve found that there is plenty of information about the virus in French online. The goal of this awareness campaign is to make sure that as much information as possible that is issued by Israeli authorities is also available in French. Here’s one of the earlier announcements:

And one of the later announcements:

And the latest post:

In addition, Santé Israël has added the latest information to its web site.

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for their continued support of Santé Israël over the years. Wishing health and safety to all!

Naomi Roff2020-03-21T14:41:47+00:00March 3rd, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Santé Israël - French internet platform on the Israeli healthcare system|

Monthly Archives: March 2020