Naomi Roff | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

MiniActive Women in Municipality Video – Urging East Jerusalem Residents to Follow COVID-19 Regulations

We wrote here, here, and here about East Jerusalem’s fantastic fight against the coronavirus in the spring of 2020. The Jerusalem Post even wrote about it here.

Unfortunately, the situation today is much worse, with Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem being among the hardest hit in the city. You can read here about what’s going on.

Facebook page where videos were uploaded

Since its establishment in 2012, the MiniActive women have been leading the way in a number of social causes from garbage collection to physical infrastructure in the neighborhoods. Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis they have also been leading the way, disseminating information and helping local needy families. You can read about that here, here and here.

Now, MiniActive women are providing a women’s voice to the fight against coronavirus, in two videos that were made in cooperation with the Forum for East Jerusalem, which was formed to fight the coronavirus in East Jerusalem, together with the Jerusalem Municipality and other bodies.

Here’s one of the videos (in Arabic):

And here’s the other:

Let’s hope that these videos help the efforts to contain the coronavirus in East Jerusalem.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Natan for their ongoing support of MiniActive!

Naomi Roff2020-09-19T10:35:32+00:00September 2nd, 2020|Blog, MiniActive|

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|

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|

“Traveling Forward” Meets with the Mayor

In recent months, during and in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, the Traveling Forward in Jerusalem forum, a large and growing group of Jewish (secular and Haredi) and Arab residents, has been working to promote initiatives to improve public transportation in Jerusalem. (You can read about the first, kick-off conference here.) The group consists of residents as well as professionals, who work together to develop different channels to solve problems and improve public transportation. We serve as mentors and catalysts to the group, providing the structure and infrastructure, together with and vis-a-vis the Municipality, to create a real partnership between residents, professionals and the municipality.

Public transportation in in Jerusalem (photo credit here)

In July, a meeting of activists in the Traveling Forward in Jerusalem held a meeting with Jerusalem Mayor, Moshe Lion. There were some 30 residents, Mayor Lion, transportation portfolio holder David Zohar, and representatives of the master plan for transportation.

During the meeting, four residents presented public transportation issues. Afterward, the discussion was opened up to the other participants.

The main issue raised at the meeting is the need and the residents’ desire to establish a Public Transportation Committee, to be headed by the Mayor. This committee would enable residents, professionals and council members to work together to brainstorm, plan and promote public transportation in Jerusalem. The purpose of the committee would be to advance the different issues that concern residents and professionals, and create a process of joint work that would enable both professionals and residents to improve different aspects of public transportation in the city.

The Mayor noted that while he wanted to establish a Working Committee, he felt it was too early, especially when the city and entire country are dealing with coronavirus crisis. To work up to the establishment of the committee, it was decided to establish a Learning Committee for Public Transportation, which will study the issues and potential planning processes and solutions. The Learning Committee will include residents, professionals, and City Council members David Zohar and Laura Wharton, and it is hoped that a working committee, led by Mayor Lion, will be established in the coming months. The first meeting of the Learning Committee members will take place in early September, and all members of the Travelers Forward in Jerusalem initiative group will be invited. They will decide together what the committee will concentrate on, what and how they will learn from the field in preparing to move forward.

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 Roff2020-09-11T04:59:50+00:00August 1st, 2020|Blog, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem, Traveling Forward in Jerusalem|

Living Safer Living Longer for Young Families through Zoom

As the world moved to Zoom, as did Living Safer, Living Longer.

Since June, we’ve held two workshops on Zoom for young families. There were about 10 families at each meeting. After each one, about 60% (6 of them) call the receive further guidance in making their homes safe.

Young Families Workshop.

Here’s one example: After an online lecture, a young father called Living Safer, Living Longer Director Aliza Shabo-Hayut with a question – he and his wife were going away for the weekend and he’d like for his mother – who would be watching their young son – to receive direction in maintaining a safe household. So we called her, and provided the necessary guidance. The weekend went by fine, and all were well.

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

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:34:26+00:00July 30th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

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