August, 2020 | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

A New Web Site for the Little Prince

The Little Prince has a new web site!

In May 2020 the Little Prince (well – the full name is “The Little Prince – Cleaning Jerusalem Together“) was 3 years old. This group of Jerusalemite activists – Jews, Arabs, religious and non-religious) is the main impetus for making Jerusalem a cleaner city a top priority of the Jerusalem Municipality. We are proud to be helping this activist community from day one and be the facilitators of many of its processes. In honor of this occasion and of the development and growth of the initiative, we decided to develop a website in Hebrew and Arabic.

Screen shot of Little Prince website

The site describes the project, presents its stages of development, success stories, and materials we created over the years. You can learn about our different methods, view pictures and articles about our work and achievements as a result of the work of our dedicated members.

We can final refer people to read about our accomplishments and enable them to contact us. You, too, are welcome to enter!

Here’s a link to the site: https://www.littleprince.org.il/

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund, and the US Embassy in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, for their support of the Little Prince.

Naomi Roff2020-08-29T05:42:45+00:00August 30th, 2020|Blog, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

MiniActive Youth – Providing Relief and Enrichment during Corona Time

During this time of great uncertainty, MiniActive Youth continues to provide constructive activities, which help the community and also give the youth something positive to do during the summer break.

Doing constructive activities during summer break

Here, the youth built storage options, worked in the garden, and created their own raised beds.

Good times during summer vacation

They also had a healthy lunch. Yum!

Looks good!

Congratulations to the MiniActive Youth! Here’s the Facebook post:

And more pictures from work a few days before:

Many thanks to the Leichtag Foundation‘s Jerusalem Model for their support of this summertime initiative for youth. And many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Natan for their ongoing support of MiniActive!

Naomi Roff2020-09-11T04:54:52+00:00August 25th, 2020|Blog, MiniActive|

Intercultural Communication in Mental Health Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic

We wrote here about our first Zoom-based meeting for cultural competency coordinators in health care during the coronavirus crisis. The second meeting, held on June 24, focused on mental health.

Ofra, Director of Special Programs in Mental Health, Ministry of Health, opens the online session

The meeting included 25 professionals, most of them cultural competency coordinators and coordinators for patient experience in psychiatry, for hospital-based as well as community-based care.

It was important and helpful to pause for a moment during these exceptional times, and reflect upon the changes in interpersonal and intercultural communication that characterize the recent period. We saw that many of the challenges stemmed from the restrictions that prevent family or other visitors from being able to mediate or be extra support systems for the patients.

Sometimes solutions have been found. In psychotherapy, for example, the challenges of not being able to see facial expressions while wearing a mask has been solved by wearing plastic shields, or by remote therapy. However, technological barriers often prevent the transition to online therapy, including lack of physical access to computers and a lack of access to treatment in the appropriate language, especially among the older population. Many therapists and treatment centers are trying to provide treatment in different ways to protect the health of the patients, without sacrificing quality and cultural competence. At the same time, they fear for their own health and safety.

It was very exciting to hear about the solutions taken in the various organizations:

An effort to provide solutions for speakers of lesser-used languages through organizations and representatives from consulates in the Sharon area;
Tablets and training for patients in Acco;
Translation of explanatory pages on the isolation unit in various languages at Hadassah Ein Kerem;
Use of recorded and culturally adapted tutorials by phone or video at a hospital in Be’er Sheva, and more.

At the end of the session, all felt that they had learned a great deal. The warm and positive responses that were sent afterward definitely reinforced this feeling.

rachelly2020-10-09T11:46:47+00:00August 25th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

MiniActive – Providing Women with Important Life Skills in the Shadow of COVID-19

On Tuesday, August 11, MiniActive finished a 5-session life skills course for its members.

Learning life skills for success

This course gave the women skills to help them deal with the stresses of the day, especially those associated with the coronavirus crisis. We received very very positive feedback from the women. If they could have, they would have continued with the meetings.

Participants in the Life Skills course

Here are some pictures from the final meeting. Here’s a Facebook post (in Arabic) from the MiniActive Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Model for their support of this summertime initiative for youth. And many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Natan for their ongoing support of MiniActive!

Naomi Roff2020-08-19T13:44:17+00:00August 22nd, 2020|Blog, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Living Safer Living Longer in Amharic for Seniors of Ethiopian Origin

We’ve described here our work to help senior citizens keep a safe house, especially during the coronavirus crisis. While before we concentrated on Jerusalem, this new situation has also enabled us to help seniors all over Israel. One example is the group of Ethiopian senior citizens, being helped by a university student of Ethiopian descent.

Living Safer, Living Longer via the telephone

University student volunteers were recruited during the lockdown of March – April, to make contact with seniors by telephone, first to make sure they were OK, and then to see if they’d like to make sure their homes were safe. The student volunteers were and continue to be a critically important part of the project, since they are in continual direct contact with the seniors over the phone.

One of the student volunteers is of Ethiopian origin, part of a Young Olim Leadership group that underwent training in guiding senior citizens over the phone in making their house safer.

After the training he decided to establish an Amharic-language group for senior citizens of Ethiopian origin, from Or Yehuda and Lod. There are 22 seniors in his group. Although the training and all the explanatory materials are only in Hebrew, he speaks with them in Amharic and goes through each room of the house, making sure each is safe. Each time he covers a different room.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:48:15+00:00August 20th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Little Prince Begins Professional Partnership with Municipal Sanitation Department

The Little Prince ( “The Little Prince – Cleaning Jerusalem Together“) and the municipal operations department began their partnership about a year and a half ago.

The Little Prince activists established an extensive network of forums in which residents from all over the city met with the operations department, the division directors, the regional directors, the director of the 106 municipal hotline, the Community Services Department, and more.

Historic meeting with sanitation department

Through these forums residents and professionals could present plans, raise issues, devise solutions, develop initiatives and more.
In parallel, 5 working groups of residents were established together with: the Enforcement and Policing Division, the Sanitation Division, the Beautification Department, the 106 municipal hotline and the municipal PR and Spokesman’s office.
They created an empire of cooperation! Meetings, joint planning, consultation, carrying out projects.

And then came the coronavirus.

And, like nearly everywhere else, everything stopped.

After the lockdowns were lifted, there were those who said that this situation would not return, and that it was impossible to meet now and that it would not work via Zoom.

But this mutual partnership was important to both sides. Both the operations department and the members of the Little Prince friends did not give up. On Thursday, August 6, the first working meeting between members of the Little Prince and the Sanitation Department took place. It was an excellent meeting – professional, well organized and full of compliments and jokes. So if you’re wondering, it is possible to partner with the Municipality via Zoom. And it’s even fun!

Here’s a Facebook post about it (in Hebrew):

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund, and the US Embassy in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, for their support of the Little Prince.

Naomi Roff2020-08-29T05:53:52+00:00August 18th, 2020|Blog, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

Living Safer, Living Longer, in the Shadow of COVID-19

The Living Safer, Living Longer initiative was designed to provide lectures and in-person mentoring to help seniors and young families assess home safety and preventive health measures that can improve their quality of life.

For illustration

With the onset of the coronavirus crisis, Living Safer, Living Longer shifted its focus to mainly the elderly, a population at risk during this time.

It has joined with welfare department initiatives that phone seniors to check up on their welfare. Phone-based mentoring has replaced in-person individual guidance (for the time-being, at least), with an emphasis on home safety. This was especially important leading up to the Passover holiday, when many people do extra cleaning, retrieve dishes and other materials from hard-to-reach places, and more. And because of shelter-in-place directives, the fear was that seniors would attempt to do tasks regularly reserved for younger friends and family members, resulting in at-home accidents. Fortunately, this situation did not transpire.

Bolstered by university student volunteers, the initiative first called all seniors on welfare lists provided by the Jerusalem Municipality in the Gilo, Lev Ha’Ir and German Colony area, as well as in Kiryat Hayovel. In follow-up calls, volunteers went through a protocol of home safety checklists, to ensure that the seniors would be safe at home during this time of social distancing. Since April, the Living Safer, Living Longer project has spoken with over 520 seniors by phone. Many of them have asked for second consultations as well.

In addition, we have been getting the word out via Zoom. Aliza, the project director, has been giving Zoom lectures on making the house safe for seniors in cooperation with the Municipality’s GimlaZoom initiative for seniors, which offers a range of enrichment activities and lectures for seniors, online. After the first lecture on July 26, 12 people requested additional individual guidance via telephone. On August 12, she concentrated on ‘Making the house safe for the grandchildren,’ also of special importance for the seniors.

Screen shot of the GimlaZoom web site for seniors

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of the Living Safer, Living Longer initiative.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:37:59+00:00August 15th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Little Prince: Inspiring Municipal Support Neighborhood Cleanup Projects

We’ve written here about how the Little Prince has been the impetus for making Jerusalem a clean city a top priority of the Jerusalem Municipality. A new initiative, calling for neighborhood-based programs, is another example.

This initiative, published on August 7 in the Jerusalem-based Kol Ha’Ir newspaper as a call for initiatives:

The Jerusalem Municipality calls on city residents to join forces and help municipal authorities improve the city and its urban landscape through funding for initiatives to clean up the city, which will be operated in residential neighborhoods across the city.

Municipal call for initiatives

As part of the municipal reform led by Mayor Moshe Lion, the municipality invites residents to propose neighborhood initiatives to clean up and improve the appearance of the city. Initiatives that are selected will receive full long-term funding, with the goal of becoming permanent community initiatives.

The purpose of the new project, noted the municipality, “is to create a clean and pleasant public space that enables a good quality of life, while promoting and encouraging residents’ involvement, growing neighborhood leadership and strengthening the sense of partnership in the city in general and in the neighborhood in particular. Keeping Jerusalem’s public spaces clean is a high priority of Mayor Lion.”…

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, said: “This project is part of the cleaning reform that I announced when I took office. The purpose of the project is to create cooperation and involvement of residents, in changing the face of the city, along with continued municipal activities in the area of cleaning up the city. I call on all residents to submit their proposals. And be a partner in the city’s cleaning revolution. “

You can read the full article here.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund, and the US Embassy in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, for their support of the Little Prince.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T16:00:53+00:00August 11th, 2020|Blog, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

Culturally Competent Health Care for the Haredi Community in the Age of COVID-19: A Discussion with Rabbi Zvi Porat

We recently held a Zoom event that focused on caring for the ultra-Orthodox community during the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel. It was one of the most significant and exciting events – which is part of a series of Zoom meetings for cultural competence coordinators in healthcare organizations and in general – that we’ve had thus far.

Invitation to the online event

It is no secret that the ultra-Orthodox community is sensitive about being labeled, especially if it affects their healthcare, for better or for worse. For the better, this labeling sometimes helps to provide tailored and improved care, such as making sure that patients receive meals in accordance with their specific dietary (kashrut) regulations, or the best/ most culturally sensitive ways of communicating with them or those who accompany them. For the worse, for the ultra-Orthodox community, being labled also means that they’re being singled out, and they feel that they are being discriminated against based on stereotypes of the ultra-Orthodox population. This creates an especially sensitive situation since the community has been particularly hard hit during this pandemic, and causes feelings of inferiority and discrimination – and resentment – even when there is no such intention on the part of the caregivers.

About the complexity of inter-identity relations during health care

In addition, the heated public discourse fans the flames of an already sensitive situation. With the outbreak of the coronavirus, the media often portrayed the ultra-Orthodox community as disobeying safety regulations and crowding together in huge events despite social isolation guidelines that were set in order to protect the public. At the same time, positive aspects of the community’s behavior – from cooperation with and generosity to the police and the Home Front Command who were patrolling the neighborhoods during the lockdown – also extraordinary events – were barely noticed.

Inter-identity and intercultural questions that concern healthcare practitioners

Given this complexity, and in light of our familiarity with the diversity of communities within the different ultra-Orthodox populations in Israel, coupled with the necessity to engage all populations in working to both follow the current health guidelines and treat patients in the best way possible, we initiated a meeting specifically on the subject of Healthcare for Ultra-Orthodox Communities in the Shadow of COVID-19. In the meeting, which took place via Zoom on July 15, 2020, Rabbi Zvi Porat, an expert on delivering culturally competent healthcare to the ultra-Orthodox community, spoke about the complexities and experiences experienced by members of the ultra-Orthodox community in various healthcare settings. He also presented different examples of how to respond to different challenges in an appropriate manner that meets the needs of the ultra-Orthodox and does not create a feeling of being stygmatized.

Discussing the complexities of the intercultural encounter in healthcare

Dr. Michal Schuster presented the culturally competent perspective in treating ultra-Orthodox patients, as well as recommendations based on proven experience and veteran initiatives that have already provided successful responses, alongside the complexity of the ever-changing guidelines, especially for those who do not receive regular updates from television or social media.

Dr. Racheli Ashwell presented the transformative model for managing tension-filled events and inter-identity conflicts and the recommended way to avoid such events and manage them in a positive and empowering way.

One of the things that was exciting about this meeting was the number of participants: 48 people devoted their time in the middle of the day to an hour and a half session. Feedback was very positive, and the productive and constructive discussions that took place during the meeting demonstrated the importance and the need for such training during this complex period.

rachelly2020-09-11T05:01:28+00:00August 7th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Mt. Zion Residents Meeting to Discuss Tourism

If this had been any other year, Mount Zion would have been crowded with visitors and tourists from Israel and the world. Many of the organizations and sites on Mount Zion usually host tourists, whether they are pilgrims who come to visit the churches, tourists from abroad or Israelis who come to visit the Chamber of the Holocaust, celebrations and events held at the David’s Harp, and more.

Zoom meeting of Mount Zion organization to discuss tourism

This year, the coronavirus has basically shut down the tourist industry. In an effort to think about future steps, organizations and sites on Mount Zion – initiated a ‘tenants’ meeting to discuss tourism. Especially now that the industry is in nearly complete collapse, it is a good time to think of creative solutions for tourism now, and in the future.

During the meeting, on July 28, 2020, a number of ideas were raised for improving tourism on Mount Zion, both during the corona and after the crisis.

As follow-up to the meeting, an operative body that will concentrate on tourism on Mount Zion, including organizations whose main focus is tourism, has been established. The Mayor was invited for a tour of Mount Zion, and the group will continue to develop ideas and initiatives.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its ongoing support of the JICC on Mount Zion, and for the Window to Mount Zion project in particular.

meyravh2020-09-11T04:57:52+00:00August 4th, 2020|Blog, Mount Zion|

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Monthly Archives: August 2020