Naomi Roff | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

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Speaking in the Square – Continuing to Facilitate Healthy Debate in Jerusalem’s Public Sphere

This past week, Speaking in the Square, a group with members from all over the political spectrum, has been continued to be recognized as a formidable force in fighting racism and xenophobia in the city center, especially in Zion Square. We’ve been working with Speaking in the Square since events exploded in Jerusalem last summer, and are incredibly proud of their influence on the public sphere in Jerusalem. This is also the place to thank the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of our efforts to fight racism and xenophobia in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, the onset of summer has seen a resurgence of demonstrations and racist activity by the Lehava organization, as covered by this article that appeared in Ynet on July 13, one of Israel’s most-read news sites. In addition to a number of other groups aiming to fight racism, the reporter turns to Speaking in the Square (or other literal translations of the Hebrew, Medabrim BaKikar) :

From Ynet article July 13, 2015

While Lehava continues to demonstrate, Speaking in the Square continues its method of engaging these youth in a deeper dialogue, one that attempts to explore the nuances and complexities of the issues they are trying to solve. Over the past few months, Speaking in the Square has also developed a a public debate format, in which participants choose to uphold either the pro or con sides of an issue, right smack in the middle of Zion Square. They debate a wide range of issues, from civil marriages and other issues of religion and state, to controversial news items, should girls and boys be able to sit together or separately in school (in religious schools they sit separately), and more.

Speaking in the Square Debate

Most times the evenings are a success – the debaters speak well and respectfully on both sides of the issues, a diverse (and hopefully large) crowd gathers to watch, enabling members to hammer home their message of respectful dialogue, no matter what your personal views. But once in awhile, things don’t go so well – there are a lot of youth getting out of control, late into the night, fueled by impassioned Lehava leaders – who create public disturbances that even the police struggle to control.

This past Thursday, July 16, was a particularly successful evening of debates. Garnering a large and very diverse crowed, participants took the mike to debate issues such as civil marriage, public transportation on Shabbat, dilemmas surrounding the destruction of terrorists’ homes.

Crowd on July 16, 2015

This activity has caught the attention of Rachel Danziger, who blogs for the Times of Israel:

“Ofek [Birnholtz, a social activist and one of the founders of Speaking in the Square] and other like-minded individuals decided to reclaim the public space. But how do you fight against hatred? The group, which later adopted the name “Medabrim Bakikar” (talking in the square), maintains that counter demonstrations are not the answer. Instead of yelling a different set of slogans, the members of the group decided to offer an alternative to Lehava’s discourse of hate.”

You can read the rest of her blog post here.

Speaking in the Square will continue speaking with everyone in Zion Square each Thursday and Saturday night, and new volunteers are always welcome. You’re welcome to join us in promoting a more tolerant Jerusalem that can celebrate the city’s diversity.

Naomi Roff2015-07-24T10:52:13+00:00July 22nd, 2015|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem|

Building a Network of Services for Asylum Seekers in Jerusalem

We last described some of the efforts that we’re making to help African asylum seekers living in Jerusalem here . But in looking back since our first post on the subject in August 2013, we can be very, very proud. Not only can we report about achievements here and there, we can describe a whole network of services – from health care, to education, to employment, to social and welfare rights – that we have developed, together with a wide range of partners, from the Jerusalem Municipality, the Jerusalem Foundation, Jerusalem African Community Center (JACC), and many more. All work in tandem with the part-time coordinator we support, together with the municipality, to help to improve the quality of life of African asylum seekers in Jerusalem.As our Tal Kligman noted, “to have such a complete network of services after such a short time for a relatively small group of people, is nothing short of amazing. the community of African asylum seekers in Jerusalem has many needs and they are in a very difficult situation. But they are on the map, and there is a whole consortium of agencies and organizations that is looking out for them. We are proud to be part of this endeavor.” While the needs are very great, below are some examples of how far we’ve come.

Tour of Nahlaot neighborhood

Health Care. We’ve been working with the Meuchedet Health Services, which provides health care to most of the asylum seekers in Jerusalem. (Read here for an earlier blog post). This cooperation has continued, with vaccination drives for children, translation of forms to Tigrinya (the language spoken by asylum seekers from Eritrea, the most populous group), and ongoing work with the help of our Cultural Competency desk. There has also been joint work with the local well-baby clinic. We wrote here about the first aid evening for mothers that we held last year (including the black baby manikin that was used for CPR), followed by other first aid courses and workshops for parents. Workers and volunteers were on hand at the clinic on days they brought their children, to help them with language and other issues.

Education. We are part of an early childhood forum, which also includes the JEA, municipal welfare department, community representatives and other organizations, which seek to discuss the needs of the community and explore responses. We helped to translate school and kindergarten registration forms into Tigrinya, provided translation services during parent teacher conferences in the kindergartens. Together with the Jerusalem Education Authority (JEA), we held special registration days for public kindergartens with translators on hand, which included translating the registration forms, in the late afternoons and evenings, when the working parents were off work. These evenings were crazy (as in, not very orderly, but what can you expect with 3-4 year-old children running around in the evening?), but also very, very important. Until now, registration was either via the municipality’s web site (which is in Hebrew only), or physically, at the municipality building, which is also in Hebrew. Some children were registered and did attend municipal frameworks, but there were too many incidents where young children were left alone while their parents were at work. These included reports of a 4-year old child was seen wandering the streets unsupervised, or of a 3-year old girl who was babysitting for her younger siblings when her parents were at work. These children need to be in constructive frameworks.

Work with the children of asylum seekers doesn’t end with placing them in kindergartens. When there, many do not know Hebrew, which leads to behavioral problems and cognitive delays. In order to help the children, as well as the parents and the teachers, this past year the children were given didactic evaluations, thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation. The evaluations will enable the children to receive extra assistance, and help the teachers to integrate the children better into their classes.

Social Services. Programs included:

A parenting program operated by the municipal welfare department, targeting parents and children, aiming to strengthen parenting skills.
An information evening about workers’ rights, operated by the Lev Ha’Ir Community Council, together with the Worker’s Hotline organization and JACC.

In a community garden

Community. A number of initiatives aimed at integrating the community better into the general Jerusalem community. These programs are in cooperation with the Center for International Migration and Integration (CIMI) and the Lev Ha’Ir Community Council, which provides programming for all populations in the city center. Activities included:

Meetings between Israelis and asylum seekers
Story hour for Israelis as well as asylum seekers, featuring a story about about children of asylum seekers.
Hosting in neighborhood Sukkoth during the Sukkoth holiday.
Tour of the Nahlaot neighborhood, showing community members the different institutions, community gardens, and stories of the neighborhood. Participants said that this tour was something special. There were dozens of children and their parents who ran through the alleyways of Nahlaot, most of them African asylum seekers, and some Israelis. At the Community Center the community social worker told them about the different activities and services available there, and invited families to take part. At the Barbur Gallery the children made plants in the community garden and the director told them about the place itself and the community gardens in the area.

Naomi Roff2016-12-14T19:19:42+00:00June 8th, 2015|Asylum Seekers, Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Identity Groups and Conflicts|

Emergency Readiness Networks – Saving Lives in Summer as Well as Winter

We’ve mentioned a number of times that the Emergency Readiness Networks, which have developed under our mentoring, do heroic work during snow storms this year and last. Rest assured, these teams are trained for all kinds of emergencies, and are busy saving lives in summer as well as in winter.

Fires are a huge problem in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. People often don’t know whom to call in case of a fire; roads are narrow and steep and difficult for fire trucks to navigate. In recent months 32 volunteers have been added to the Emergency Readiness Networks (ERN) teams, who have been specifically trained in firefighting. They underwent a 3-month training course, given by the Israeli Fire and Rescue Authority. These volunteers have been added to each of the existing 8 ERNs (4 in each network), as a sub-team, specifically dedicated to firefighting and supplementing official fire and rescue services.

Below are three examples where these teams helped save lives.

In March, a gas cylinder exploded in Jebel Mukaber in the south of the city. Unfortunately, the explosion killed the homeowner, but the local ERN team was the first on the scene and evacuated the rest of the members of the household, who were all in shock by what had happened.

Jebel Mukaber fire March 2015

In April, a fire broke out in a warehouse of lumber and other construction materials. The Wadi Joz (central) ERN team worked together with teams from the neighborhood of Shuafat and the Shuafat refugee camp (two different teams), together with the professional firefighters, for more than 8 hours to contain the blaze. ERN teams helped to evacuate residents from their homes to get away from the thick smoke, and also helped to clear roads in case wounded needed to be evacuated from the scene. (Fortunately this wasn’t needed, but it was important that the work was done.) Extensive use was made of the ERN Facebook page as well as the MiniActive Facebook page, to warn and inform residents.

Fighting fires in cramped spaces

A third incident happened just last week, on Wednesday, May 27. A brush fire broke out in the north of the city, in the area of Atarot, but on land that is part of the Palestinian Authority. Two ERN teams, one from Beit Hanina and one from Shuafat, were on hand to help 5 teams of professional firefighters (3 from Jerusalem and 2 from Ramallah) put out the fire.*

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of this project, and the Daimler AG and the Sobell Foundation, which support the project via the Jerusalem Foundation.

*This joint work between Israeli and Palestinian firefighting teams is a rare event. The last time there was cooperation between the two authorities was during the huge Mount Carmel forest fire that raged for four whole days in December 2010, when teams were sent from Jenin to help extinguish the fire.

Naomi Roff2015-06-13T13:55:02+00:00June 1st, 2015|Blog, Emergency Readiness Networks, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs|

MiniActive Going International – at the GPSA Conference in Washington, DC

We’ve always known that the MiniActive project was on to something special, and that the 1,000 women – and 150 teenage girls – who take part are doing an amazing job. And now we’re getting to share this knowledge with others around the world. Just last week, our own Hagai Agmon-Snir and Intisar Qaraeen took part in the GPSA (Global Partnership for Social Accountability) Partners Forum 2015 in Washington, DC, USA. They presented MiniActive as a case study for empowering Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and enabling the provision of municipal and other services. The GPSA was launched in 2012 by the World Bank, and seeks to help civil society organizations solve critical governance challenges. “Everyone who heard the story of MiniActive was very impressed,” said Hagai. “It was a great experience for both of us.” Click here to see the power point that they gave.

Intisar at podium, GPSA

And indeed, MiniActive’s accomplishments in recent months are quite impressive. Work with the teenage girls has developed well. (More about the groups here.) In late February girls from the Jebel Mukaber High School for Girls took on a project to clean up and beautify the road that leads to their school. Unfortunately, during the summer months last year this street was also the site of unrest and violence, which left the street in not-a-very-good-state. The girls cleaned up the street and painted the electricity boxes and the fence that runs along the road. It now not only looks better, the girls and their schoolmates and families, feel much better about their environment.

Jebel Mukaber girls painting March 2015

Also as part of the program the girls’ groups are taking part in ceramics classes, provided by the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. As part of that course, which will finish at the end of May, girls from the Umm Tuba Junior High School for Girls are preparing a giant ceramic clock for the school. Girls from the Jebel Mukaber High School for Girls are decorating a wall with ceramic tiles, which will have representations of their hopes and dreams. This project will also be finished soon; stay tuned for pictures.

MiniActive Women – Continued Accomplishments and Community Building

Here’s a few updates from the largest project for Palestinians – and largest women’s project – in East Jerusalem:

First – we’re expanding! We recently opened several new groups in Ras el-Amud, and welcomed 100 new women to the project. A few statistics about the work: In March, there were 470 requests for repairs, 150 of which were taken care of; In April, there were 600 requests, 200 of which were taken care of. In addition, 25 compost bins were distributed. These included a safety net in Sur Baher, a handrail along the side of a steep road to help pedestrians, fixing potholes, electrical wires, placing safety mirrors on windy roads, and much more. Women from the Old City toured the neighborhood with the worker in charge of garbage collection in that area, and he promised to place another 10 garbage receptacles throughout the Palestinian areas of the Old City. In the beginning of March 20 women met with a representative of the water company. They discussed different difficulties Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem face with regards to water – bills, meters, etc. – and explored ways to solve problems.

Fixing potholes

We continue to develop the professional skills of the women, especially the group leaders. Monthly regional coordinator meetings (who are in charge of several groups in each neighborhood) discuss issues that the women are facing throughout the city – garbage collection, donations to families in need, how to deal with service providers’ sub-contractors (which is common in East Jerusalem), how to interact with the municipal hotline operators, and more. At the end of March there was a large event in honor of the MiniActive women. We thought – March includes International Mothers’ Day, Women’s Day, etc., it should also include a MiniActive Women’s Day. The even attracted more than 250 women, who enjoyed a comedy act, they shared handicrafts that different groups had made, and more.

Women browsing handicrafts women celebration day

Fifty-two MiniActive women participated in a tour of Haifa in March. They visited the Bahai Gardensand then the Beit Hagefen Arab-Jewish Cultural Center. Beit Hagefen operates different volunteer projects in Arab neighborhoods in Haifa, and this tour was by and large a learning tour. The Jerusalem women heard about a number of projects, such as projects for girls at-risk, an “alternative” youth club and a tour of the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood.

The MiniActive women have also been participating in a number of courses:

Hebrew – they’ve expanded to include both beginning (35 participants) and intermediate (70 participants) levels.
Computers – 16 participants in an introduction to computers course.
Lev Isha (Women’s Heart) – program promoting women’s health and nutrition, in cooperation with the Linda Joy Polling Cardiovascular Wellness Center at Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Kerem. Twenty MiniActive women participated.
Compost instructor – Twelve MiniActive women are participating in a course offered by the David Yellin Academic College of Education in instructing community members in using compost effectively.
Sports – Forty women are participating in a sports class, which meets twice weekly, that opened in April.

Naomi Roff2016-10-22T07:29:24+00:00May 20th, 2015|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Learning Arabic through Culture

Throughout this past year, students studying Arabic for communication at the JICC have been treated to a wide variety of cultural events, with the goal of enabling them to more fully understand Arabic cultures and experience. Last week, on May 5, students enjoyed an evening with Palestinian director Sahera Dirbas, a Palestinian director, originally from Haifa, who currently lives in Jerusalem. Students saw the film, “Jerusalem Bride,” which tells about the complicated fabric of life of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem today – the poverty, unemployment, problems of young couples in finding work and housing, and the difficulty in building a family. After the film there was a 1 1/2 hour discussion with the director on these and other issues.

Jerusalem Bride

On April 15, one of our long-time teachers, Dr. Anwar Ben-Badis, took students on a tour of the Musrara neighborhood, focusing on the history of Arabic culture in the neighborhood and contrasting it with the neighboring sections of the Old City. (The neighborhoods of Talbiye, Katamon and Musrara are examples of neighborhoods that are today distinctly Jewish, in the heart of west Jerusalem. However, for the first few decades of the 20th century, prominent Arab families, largely Christian, lived in these areas.) Anwar led participants to a number of houses built with Arab architecture, and told the story of each house. Another stop on the tour was the “Under the Bridge” coffee house outside of the Damascus Gate. Operated by two brothers, they shared with the students their experiences of leaving their houses. One brother still carries the keys to his house.

On February 25 Anwar led students on a tour the Old City, concentrating on Sufi sights. The Sufi movement grew from within the Islamic world in the 8th and 9th centuries. Sufi philosophy, which continues to be a part of the Islamic religion today, holds that God is found in everything, and everyone has a personal connection to God. Today Sufis live simply, wearing wool garments (the word Suf means “wool” in Arabic). The Sufi centers is Israel today are in Jerusalem, Acco and Jaffa. The tour took students to special Sufi gathering sights (zawai), which were built by rich Muslims, and are often found beside mosques. They served as hotels, bath houses, health clinics, and religious schools. One of the zawaii today serves as a branch of Al-Quds University. One of the former bath houses holds a theater today, and another, a gallery.

Sufi tour

These tours were two examples of a range of cultural activities our Arabic students have been encountering over the course of the school year. Others included: a concert by the YMCA Jewish-Arab Youth Choir, lectures, poetry readings, and more. We are also holding cultural encounters with various Arab cultural figures, such as a poet, artists, musician, actors, etc.These events are helping to bring the Arabic language and culture alive, beyond the regular textbooks.

Concert at YMCA

The JICC has been offering Arabic language for communication almost since its establishment, thanks to the ongoing support of the Jerusalem Foundation. Since September we’ve been teaching over 120 students in 8 classes, over 5 levels in weekly classes. They cover the entire spectrum of the population – young people and seniors, professionals and students – all seeking to be able to use Arabic to communicate with those they share the city with.

Arabic classes at concert

In addition to these activities that are offered for all students, participants also expand their knowledge of local Arabic language and culture in other ways. Some of the students, who teach adults Hebrew, have Arab pupils. They have organized for the Jewish students studying Arabic to meet up with the Arab students studying Hebrew, for each to practice the ‘other’s language and to get to know each other as well.

It’s such a joy to come back every year to these courses, a staple of the JICC’s annual programming, which are constantly filled to capacity. Indeed, the national daily newspaper Ha’aretz recently published a lengthy article about the plethora of Arabic-language classes popping up in Jerusalem, mentioning us quite extensively.

Arabic study article

Naomi Roff2015-06-13T13:49:54+00:00May 10th, 2015|Blog, Courses, Language Center|

Working with Maccabi Health Services

What if all Israeli kupot holim (HMO’s) were culturally competent, from the bottom up and from the top-down? What if every time you went to the doctor, he or she – and the administrative support staff – would be better able to meet your needs, speak in your native language (or have access to someone who could), understand where your coming from, culturally speaking?

Since the Israel Ministry of Health published its directive in 2011, requiring all health care institutions to become culturally competent, things have improved, but there’s still a ways to go. Slowly, one HMO at a time, we’re helping to rectify the situation. We’ve been working with Jerusalem-based clinics and hospitals since the beginning of the Cultural Competency project in 2008 (this is the earliest blog post on the project). Last year, we began working with the Leumit HMO on a national level, the first time we had worked with national management and not primary clinics. In late 2014, we also began working with the national level of Maccabi HMO.

Maccabi seminar

We began with a 3-workshop introductory course that took place in December – January in Maccabi’s central instruction center in Tel Aviv. There were 25 participants, from all disciplines in the HMO – from nurses and physicians to administrators on different levels – from all over the country. During the course participants learned tools that will enable them to integrate principles of cultural competency into different aspects of the health organization. They also heard a lecture from Prof. Leon Epstein, one of the major researchers whose research serves as the basis for our cultural competency project , about the connection between society and culture on health an sickness. Dr. Anat Jaffe, Head of the Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit at the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center and a founder of the Tene Briut organization, shared her experience providing culturally competent care to diabetes patients from the Ethiopian community. Participants also learned from a “Community Panel,” in which different cultures’ approaches to health and health care were presented (Haredi, Ethiopian, Muslim, French).

Maccabi panel full room

Each of the participants was asked to develop and implement a project in the district or clinic in which he or she worked that would advance cultural competency. Examples included: an information sheet directed at Haredi women on sexual assault; a “Your Health is in Your Hands” handout, which lists the different recommended tests; a clinic that is accessible to French speakers; encouraging Muslims to use physical therapy through quotes from the Prophet Muhammad; engaging a volunteer to help fill out forms for Russian or Arabic-speakers; a public awareness meeting on diabetes, adapted to the needs of Russian speakers, and more.

Last week, on April 29, we held a follow-up conference for these participants. The meeting included a tour of the ALYN Pediatric & Adolescent Rehabilitation Center in Jerusalem, the first hospital in the country to undergo the cultural competency process, with our mentorship. They saw first hand how they implement cultural competency principles on a daily basis. ALYN’s cultural competency coordinator also explained how the hospital and its staff copes with different social and political tensions in a culturally competent manner. (ALYN’s Director General Dr. Maurit Be’eri wrote about this here during last year’s Operation Protective Edge.) In addition, participants heard a fascinating lecture by the director of the municipal welfare office in a Haredi neighborhood, on how to create a community context, especially during times of crisis. Her office was at the center of a crisis in mid-2009 when a Haredi mother was accused of starving her child. Out of this crisis arose a process of culturally competent work that includes local rabbis, community leaders from the Eidah Haredit, and different public offices that enable the welfare services in this area to be culturally sensitive to the Haredi population. Participants also heard updates of their respective projects.

Naomi Roff2017-05-26T20:04:47+00:00May 5th, 2015|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, New Immigrants, Palestinians/Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

0202 – Promoting Tolerance by Increasing Knowledge

We recently wrote about our redoubled efforts, together with the Jerusalem Foundation and other partners, to help grassroots activists in fighting racism and promoting tolerance in Jerusalem. And believe it or not, just a week after our second meeting for activists, one of these initiatives has already been successfully launched – 0202. 0202 is a brand-new Facebook page that translates Arabic-language news items about East Jerusalem into Hebrew. It seeks to give Hebrew-speakers a peek into everyday life in East Jerusalem, through the eyes of the Palestinian residents.

In less than a day, the page garnered over 1,000 likes! Three weeks later, we celebrated 2020 likes to 0202….

How did the page come about? During the summer months and into the fall, when the situation in East Jerusalem was particularly volatile, it seemed to many activists that the lack of knowledge and understanding of East Jerusalem is an important obstacle to tolerance. Here and there, there were efforts to translate important news items from different major East Jerusalem pages, and the very positive feedback showed that this is indeed a real need.

In mid-November, Michal Shilor, one of the activists, suggested starting such a page. It took a few months, and with a bit of help from us and many others, she managed to create an activist-based mini-news-agency that emphasizes the re-humanization of East Jerusalem Palestinians. It is very hard to make such a dream come true, and it is harder to maintain it afterwards, and we are there with this committed group to help.

In the few days since it’s been up, 0202 has covered a wide range of subjects – from reports of police activity in Issawiya to activities at the Palestinian Heritage Museum to the filming of new television programs.

In fact, 0202 becomes fast an important source for main-stream press, as can be seen in April 7, 2015 Haaretz citation: “This Sharia decision (that was first published in hebrew on 0202 Facebook page)…” .

Haaretz Newspaper – citation of Page 0202

We wish all those involved in 0202 the best of luck, and look forward to further posts.

Naomi Roff2015-06-27T13:54:20+00:00April 7th, 2015|Blog, Christians, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Palestinians/Arabs, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem|

Happy Passover – Happy Easter – JICC Information Sheets from the Cultural Competency Desk

Pesach Kasher ve’Sameach and Happy Easter! May you never need medical care, but if you do, in Israel, we at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center (JICC) are making sure that medical staff at hospitals as well as other health care frameworks are aware of your Jewish, Christian or Muslim holidays . Since 2013 we have been writing one-page information sheets on different customs and traditions of a wide range of religious and cultural holidays (and wrote about it here and here) and have continued to refine and expand their scope. Today this includes not only the “major” holidays of the three Abrahamic religions, such as Yom Kippur, Passover, Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Eid el-Adha, but also holidays celebrated by particular cultural groups, such as Sigd for Jews of Ethiopian origin, and Novi Gud, celebrated by residents from the former Soviet Union, and Eid a-Nabi SNabi Shu’ayb for the Druze. In all, there are over 20 information sheets that were written or revised in the past year. Here is the full list, in Hebrew.

Nabi Shu’ayb Druze Holiday Sheet

These information sheets have a huge audience. They are distributed on a national level, not only to clinics, hospitals and other health care institutions, but they are also adapted and sent to welfare agencies and organizations as well. We see this as one more step in increasing understanding and opening communication lines of communications between the widely diverse populations in Jerusalem and Israel.

Naomi Roff2015-04-21T19:07:21+00:00April 6th, 2015|Asylum Seekers, Blog, Christians, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, New Immigrants, Palestinians/Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Cultural Competency Training for Hundreds of Staff at Central Jerusalem Branch of Maccabi Health Services

A few weeks ago we finished cultural competency training for over 200 staff at the main Jerusalem branch of the Maccabi HMO. This consisted of one-day (8-hour) seminars each with 20 – 25 participants each. This was our “standard” one-day introduction to cultural competency, that included theoretical and practical learning of cultural competency – cross-cultural communication, , medical interpretation, dealing with social and political tensions and more. Since these workshops sought to concentrate on providing culturally competent services to the Haredi population, in the afternoon session a medical actor and Haredi Rabbi joined us, and we practiced real-life situations. Central to the discussions was the “triangle” in Haredi society that connects between medicine, Jewish law (halachah) and Haredi culture. These workshops join other workshops that we’ve conducted in Jerusalem for the Clalit Health Services (see here for earlier blog posts), and Meuchedet Health Services (see here for earlier blog posts).

Maccabi Jerusalem

The seminars took place between October 2014 and February 2015, and encompassed a wide range of disciplines – medical and paramedical staff, as well as administration. Participants were quite enthusiastic. One remarked, “Cultural competency is the a-b-c of quality service, and it incorporates values that help us to provide the highest quality of services [to all patients].”

Naomi Roff2015-04-21T18:54:20+00:00March 15th, 2015|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Empowering Activists to Work toward a More Tolerant Jerusalem – the Second in a Series

One of our main tenets at the JICC is to encourage and foster effective activism, empowering residents to improve their everyday lives. From MiniActive to the Emergency Readiness Networks, to the Railway Park, residents are affecting their immediate public sphere, one issue at a time.

Since last summer, one of our main avenues of activity has been fighting racism and xenophobia in the public sphere, and fostering cadres of activists to lend their passion and intensity to the effort. We hold deep respect for these activists, who are constantly thinking of new and creative ways to promote tolerance in Jerusalem. And in the most activist of ways, they are working toward turning these ideas into reality, and creating hope for all of us for the future of Jerusalem.

In order to give these activists a helping hand, three months ago, we held the first of a series of Open Space Technology meetings. At that meeting, nine initiatives were presented, several of which continue to be developed today, from engaging leaders to public campaigns to speaking with the ‘other’ in Zion Square.

As we mentor these initiatives, we know that it is also critically important to keep opening up pathways for new initiatives as well. For this reason we held a second meeting for activists, using the Open Space Technology, on Monday, March 2, 2015, also at the Jerusalem International YMCA.

YMCA Open Space March 2, 2015

This meeting was considerably smaller than the last (50 instead of 100 participants), but it was much more mature and effective and we were equally excited by the outcomes. A total of 6 initiatives were presented. They included a Facebook page aimed at summarizing news from East Jerusalem in the eyes of Palestinian residents, a new ‘debate’ format for “Speaking in the Square,” initiatives to expand the cadres of activists and different ways to instill messages of tolerance in the public sphere.

Discussing Effective Methods

This time, in addition to offering assistance in developing the strategic steps of the initiatives, we are also helping the different initiatives to “get the word out.” Together with the Jerusalem Foundation, we’re partnering with the Gug design agency, who were on hand at the meeting, who have begun to lend their expertise in public relations, public campaigning, and more. We’ll also be consulting the initiatives in other ways, as well, as needed. Definitely, this activist energy is going to grow and impact the city, and we will do everyhting to help it happen!

Naomi Roff2015-03-09T12:01:57+00:00March 6th, 2015|Asylum Seekers, Blog, Christians, Effective Activism, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, New Immigrants, Palestinians/Arabs, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

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About Naomi Roff

MiniActive Women – Continued Accomplishments and Community Building