orna | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

About orna

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So far orna has created 10 blog entries.

Dealing with Social and Political Tensions at the Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem

The tension from the recent Guardian of the Walls operation did not go unnoticed at the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem. Guided by the principles of cultural competency, half of the museum’s instructors are Jewish, and half are Palestinian. The instruction team knows how to adapt the content to the various audiences that visit it – secular, religious, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Jews and Arabs, Israelis and tourists, and the museum’s exhibits contain information in three languages - Hebrew, Arabic and English.

The intercultural encounter at the museum invites quite a few conflicts and challenges for instructors – including social and political tensions. For example one instructor described a discussion with ultra-Orthodox students about an exhibit that describes a different perception of the length of existence of the world than that which the ultra-Orthodox students hold. During the operation, Palestinian instructors described their fear of going to the Museum, located in central Jerusalem, and groups’ fear of coming into the western part of the city. There were also numerous cancellations, or demands such as one school principal’s request that there be no Jewish groups at the Museum during their visit. There were instructors who wear a Hijab, who felt that Jews did not want to receive instruction from them because they were Muslim. Or Jewish and Muslim groups who called out racist chants to before entering the museum. These issues and challenges were difficult for instructors to deal with without appropriate tools.

Diverse staff – talking about Diversity

At the beginning of July we met with a group of museum guides – Jews and Palestinians, Hebrew and Arabic-speakers, for a two-session workshop. The guides acquired tools for dealing with intercultural group encounters, effective dialogue that helps each side to ‘see’ the other, and how to conduct a dialogue in socially or politically charged situations. Together with Orna Shani Golan, Director of the Cultural Competency Desk, the instructors developed responses for how to deal with groups conflict between groups, based on political or religious differences.

This is just the beginning of cultural competency work with the staff of the Science Museum. A future workshop is planned as part of the new instructor training, and additional work will be done with with instructors who teach classes to mixed groups of Jewish and Palestinian children, to ensure that the program is culturally competent.

orna2021-08-22T06:26:16+00:00July 20th, 2021|Blog, Cultural Competence|

Cultural Competency for On-Call Emergency Welfare Workers

What do you do when there’s an emergency late at night that requires welfare services? This is exactly what the on-call workers of the Jerusalem Municipality’s Welfare Department are for. The on-call workers, who are all social workers, respond to a multitude of incidents, including: delivering difficult news, domestic violence cases, treating youth who have run away, and answering emergency telephone calls on various issues. About 150 on-call workers took part in cultural competency workshops via Zoom – some 100 on-call workers (in three workshops at the end of June) who work in West Jerusalem, and another about 50 workers who provide services in East Jerusalem, in a special workshop which took place on July 8 delivered in Arabic for drives of the east of the city (on 8.7.21).

workshop for west Jerusalem on call workers

Workshop for on-call workers

During the workshops participants raised inter-cultural challenges they faced when they’re on-call, which is different than their everyday work – lack of familiarity with the callers and their cultural characteristics; the rapid transitioning between the vastly different cultures and backgrounds of callers; the sometimes-opposing approaches between welfare and community services; dealing with callers’ sometimes first encounters with welfare services; the objections that arise on the background of cultural perceptions versus the authority of the social worker to carry out legal orders, and more.

One on-call worker told that she had to inform an ultra-Orthodox family about the mother’s death on Friday afternoon, right before the Sabbath. She was surprised with the family’s preoccupation with burying the mother as quickly as possible, and that they weren’t open to her attempts at grief support. Another on-call worker recounted the time that she tried to move an elderly man living in unfit conditions to a shelter, and how there was significant opposition from the family.

Participants were given tools to enable them to have a culturally competent and effective encounter: to think before the encounter what cultural sensitivities they may encounter and what is the effective response to those sensitivities and tools for deepening intercultural dialogue that helps facilitate effective and sensitive care.

Two questions – helping social workers be culturally competent

This is the first workshop we’ve led for on-call workers. We hope that future workshops will preserve and strengthen this knowledge and skills.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their ongoing support of Cultural Competence in Jerusalem!

orna2021-08-02T13:40:56+00:00July 15th, 2021|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Jerusalem Municipality|

Cultural Competency in the English Department

We’ve written before about cultural competence in academia (here and here, for example). On 21.6.21 we traveled as far as Sapir College in the south for a second meeting (the first took place on Zoom) about cultural competence in teaching.

Cultural competence in academic teaching workshop

The lecturers, who teach English in diverse classes, deal with cultural gaps in teaching on a daily basis, and were very interested in what can be done to bridge those gaps. Many of their students come from the Bedouin sector; for a lecturer born in the US, these gaps seems insurmountable.

During the meeting, the lecturers raised different incidents they’d encountered – entire groups that turn off their cameras during Zoom classes, copying as characterized by different groups, not doing homework, and and more.

Practicing cultural education

The lecturers also spoke about their experience of teaching under tension – such as during Operation Guardian of the Walls this past May. One lecturer shared that while teaching a class via Zoom the virtual background of one of the students showed a map of Israel with a keffiyeh. The lecturer did not know how to deal with the situation – should they say something or not? We discussed the issue in the meeting, and practiced how to use the model of effective dialogue model and tools for dealing with social and political tensions, which was developed at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center.

Simulation with a professional Actress

In the last part of the workshop we held simulations developed from the incidents shared by the lecturers. Hanin, a professional actress, simulated Muslim students, one was was afraid to make a presentation in front of the whole class, and the other was suspected of copying. The lecturers had an opportunity to use the tools for culturally competent teaching learned during the two workshop sessions.

orna2021-09-11T17:04:39+00:00July 2nd, 2021|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Academic Institutions|

Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity

We’ve given lectures as part of the diversity management course of the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity for several years. In the course, we present the JICC’s activities in cultural competency, and present relevant tools. The current course opened in January 2021, and includes 18 participants from leading organizations and companies in Israel, including the Israel Police, Strauss, Weizmann Institute, the electric company, Elbit, a large legal office, and more.

the course participants

This year, because of Covid, the course is taking place via Zoom. The first meeting (of the two we were invited to) took place on February 10 and was led by Dr. Rachely Ashwal and Orna Shani Golan, who are leading the Cultural Competency Desk at the JICC. We presented tools to help organizations improve their ability to include everyone, not through broad organizational activities, but through personal skills that each diversity manager should have: tools for effective work in the face of generalizations, and tools to deepen inter-cultural dialogue.

Dealing with generalization

The meeting ended with a simulation in which a manager had to address an employee’s request to take vacation on the Novi God holiday, after the organization had decided not to give vacations. The simulation engaged all in understanding the unique cultural aspects of this request. In the next meeting we’ll play the HoliGame, a unique tool we developed together with the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity to deal with social and political tensions in an organization.

orna2021-03-30T16:09:21+00:00March 21st, 2021|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in the Workplace|

Training the Trainers for the Man and Medicine Course

For the past several years the Hadassah – Hebrew University School of Medicine (located at Hadassah Hospital at Ein Kerem) operates a course called “Man and Medicine,” which seeks to give medical students tools and awareness about the meeting with the person behind the sickness, and to help the future doctor look not at the sickness to be treated, but at the person as well. Members of the JICC’s Cultural Competency desk have been lecturing in the course almost since its beginning. We lectured, operated simulations and played movies to help impart the principles of cultural competence. After a few years, the course structure was changed, and we trained the course instructors how to use our training videos and teach the principles themselves.

Talking about Stereotype

On March 10, 2021, an orientation meeting was held for 30 course teachers (each one works with 12 – 13 students), most of them senior physicians at Hadassah Hospital. We were asked to give them tools to guide the students they mentor. This included: reviewing cultural competency and its principles, reminding how to use the training videos, as well as tips of how to do this via Zoom, since most of the course is currently being held remotely. The training was led by Orna Shani Golan, Director of the JICC’s Cultural Competency Desk.

The two-hour training included how to deal with generalizations about different groups, such as: “Muslim women don’t get epidural shots,” or “Ethiopians don’t look you in the eyes,” or “Vegans are anti-vaxxers,” and more. The participants discussed the communication gaps that arise when there are cultural gaps. Overall, they understood how to teach their students how to have an inter-cultural dialogue understanding the patients’ point of view from a cultural standpoint.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of cultural competency in Jerusalem since its inception, and to the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine – Hadassah Medical Center, for their long-time partnership.

orna2021-03-20T08:21:43+00:00March 17th, 2021|Blog, 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|

HoliGame – Learning about Workforce Diversity through Play

Deep into the winter months, as the seasonal rains seem to never stop, it’s easy to forget that there are holidays just around the corner. How many holidays? About 20, many of which are concentrated in April-May, and which are celebrated and commemorated by most of the religions and communities living in Israel.

As a manager or employer, how do you prepare for the holidays? What should be taken into account when preparing for the holiday? How should it be marked? What happens when holidays from different religions fall on the same day? How do you make everyone feel like they belong, even when the holiday being celebrated is not theirs?

To learn about the ways to deal with all these complex issues, our Orna Shani Golan, Director of the Cultural Competency Desk, teamed up with Noa Tron, Director of the Israeli Forum for Employment Diveristy, and together they created HoliGame – a tool about how to prepare managers, employers and other staff to speak about the different holidays during April and May, as they prepare to mark the different holidays in their organizations and companies.

Orna and Noa while the other playin the "MIshag"

Orna and Noa while the other playing HoliGame

On 18.2, we were hosted by Intel’s Petach Tikva campus. A group of 25 women from different organizations came to play HoliGame for the first time: Getting to know the holidays, dealing with different dilemmas, challenges and opportunities that arise around the holidays, as well as issues, both regarding values and organizational logistics, that arise in when different holidays fall on the same day, the different ways workers react to each other, and more.

The HoliGame board

This is how the game works. In order for participants to advance on the game board, they had to deal with dilemmas such as:

How to mark the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers without adding to existing tensions?
How do you decide which holidays the organization celebrates, and which they don’t?
What to do with a worker who actively works to sabotage an organization’s holiday commemoration?
What to do when employees complain that they must give up their traditions in the name of inclusion and cultural sensitivity?

Playing in action

They also advanced if they picked a card that advances cultural competence, such as:

As part of the preparation for the holiday period, you checked in advance who of the employees would like vacation and when.
As a result of being prepared and organized early, both the needs of the staff and the needs of the system were taken care of.
At a management meeting, it was decided that during Ramadan, all staff meetings at the company would end no later than 2pm so that the those who fast could have time to get home to the special meal that breaks their fast in the evening.

The participants were held up or had to ‘pay’ fines if they picked a card with an activity that is not culturally competent. For example:

The foreman scheduled employees for shifts without taking into account that Easter and Passover fall at the same time, and as a result, you receive complaints about being inconsiderate about employees’ needs, and employees are unwilling to work during the holiday.
Every May, a ceremony for the company’s Workers of the Year is held, with a rich array of refreshments. This year, Ramadan comes in May, so Muslim workers will not be able to take part in the ceremony.
During the interim days of Passover week, a worker who does not keep Kosher dietary laws brought a pita into the common kitchenette, which led to an incident between him and those who do keep Kosher. Workers came to you to handle the issue, and it turned out that there were no previous instructions on what to do regarding food in the company during Passover.

Participants noted that they learned a great deal about both the holidays themselves and about tools to work out issues dealing with them in order to not create new tensions in the organization, and how to prepare ahead of time for the upcoming April and May holidays in particular and holidays in the organization in general.

Concluding the game

Orna posted the following on Facebook:

Remember what it’s like when you had that dream? When you have some vague notion of what you want something to be, but the idea still doesn’t have a clear framework, a precise image in your mind, or even a name. Just a feeling. That’s the way it was with the HoliGame. A game that helps people become acquainted with the different holidays and commemorations in Israel, for those managing diverse teams. For the past several months, Noa Tron, Director of the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity and I (from the Jerusalem Intercultural Center) have been passing ideas back and forth about how to make all the diverse holidays and commemorations in Israel accessible to everyone? What is the potential to create an inclusive environment with the right approach? And how many issues can be missed along the way? And not to mention the dilemmas that arise from just preparing for and commemorating the different holidays themselves. And finally, today, 25 women (where are you men?) had the opportunity to play this game, the HoliGame. A chance to get to know the holidays (Pentecost anyone?), deal situations, some more familiar, some less, and about think what each person can do to change things in each of the companies she came from.
So one small dream was fulfilled. (And thank you to amazing designer Sagi Ashin for understanding exactly what we dreamt about.) Thank goodness that there’s more where that came from. And if you want to hear more about HoliGame or want me to come to your company, speak with me (or Noa).

Here’s the original post:

The Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity also posted the following on Facebook:

It was a festive and interesting morning at Intel’s Petach Tikva campus. Months of developing and planning about how to prepare for the April-May holidays led us to the HoliGame. Becoming familiar with the holidays, dealing with dilemmas, challenges and opportunities that arise around the holidays, as well as issues regarding values and organizational logistics that arise when holidays fall on the same days, employee reactions, and more. Twenty-five women from different companies were able to deal with these questions in an experiential and unique way.
Some of our recommendations on how to make the corporate environment more culturally competent:
* Get to know the different holiday calendars and prepare for them ahead of time.
* Learn from mistakes and successes – create an organizational memory
* Adjust the company’s readiness to the needs of current employees
* Decide what to celebrate and commemorate – along with employees
* Holiday policies – take into account: food, ceremony, work scheduling (shifts, vacations, working hours), terminology, translation, appropriate gifts
* Creating an organizational ‘toolbox’ for responding to organizational tensions
* Using effective dialogue tools for dealing with employee resistance
* Holidays are not just welfare – they affect workers’ well-being on various levels.
Want to know more? Did you want to play and were not able to come? We also come to the companies themselves. Many thanks to the Jerusalem Intercultural Center and especially to Orna Shani on the wonderful partnership. A special thanks to Sagi Ashin for the stunning design. To the Be-Atzmi organization for the comments, and to Racheli Livni-Mordechai and to Hadar Tal Falik for their wonderful hospitality and the inspiration you gave us in telling Intel’s story.

And here’s the original post:

orna2020-03-07T09:00:50+00:00February 25th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in the Workplace|

Cultural Competency with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority seeks to protect Israel’s treasures of nature, landscape, and heritage, and strives to connect people to these places.

But how do you do this effectively, with Israel’s vast diversity of populations, communities, languages and cultures?

Community and volunteer coordinators – Israel Nature and Parks authority

This was the subject of our Orna Shani Golan’s discussion with professionals from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority on January 20. More than 20 community and volunteer coordinators convened in the Afek National Park training class for the first time for a cultural competency seminar.

The coordinators meet people from a wide range of communities on a daily basis, and try, in varied ways, to connect them to values of nature and its preservation. These intercultural meetings often raise dilemmas that the coordinators discussed in the meeting. Examples included issues of language – when there are classes of Jewish students and classes of Arab students – what language will the meeting be conducted in? How do you hold a joint march when a religious school refuses to walk in mixed groups of boys and girls and demands that the secular school to march with boys and girls separately? And what to do with an employee who doesn’t discuss these disagreements about different adaptations with his or her supervisor?

These and other dilemmas dealing with the relationship of the Nature and Parks Authority, which is responsible for nature conservation, nature preserves and national parks, and advancing values of nature preservation in Israel, to the community and to all communities are Israel, must be handled in a culturally competent manner in order for the Authority’s efforts to be effective. This is especially important for communities that live close to nature reserves and whose traditional way of life – hunting, fishing, collecting wild plants, and more – might harm the flora and fauna of the reserves. At the meeting, the coordinators and supervisors spoke with Orna, Director of our Cultural Competency Desk, about the insights that arise from a meeting that uses culturally competent tools, and different tools that can be applied to their work. Some examples of tools included:

How to work correctly with cultural generalities (without sinking into stereotypes);
Understanding cultural values, and using cultural axes to improve inter-cultural communication;
The 7-stage model of deepening dialogue based on the explanatory model of Prof. Arthur Kleinman.

In addition, participants learned about culturally competent tools for community work that were developed by our director, Dr. Hagai Agmon-Snir and Dr. Orna Shemer, of The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

We seek to hold additional meetings with the staff of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, according to region, which will help staff respond effectively and in a culturally competent manner to issues and dilemmas that arise from their everyday work.

orna2020-02-22T07:00:45+00:00February 4th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence|

Semi-Annual Meeting of Healthcare Cultural Competency Coordinators at the JICC

For the past three years, we have organized a semi-annual meeting of Healthcare Cultural Competency Coordinators. Most of the Coordinators are from Jerusalem, but the meeting is open to Coordinators from throughout the country. This meeting was held on December 4, 2019 at the JICC’s offices on Mount Zion.

This meeting focused on two subjects: our own Living Safer, Living Longer project, and the experience of the Haifa-based Bnei Zion Hospital in assimilating principles of cultural competence in the hospital.

Aliza Shabo-Hayut, director of the Living Safer, Living Longer project, gave a short introduction and explained the connection to cultural competency. She explained that it was imperative that the project be culturally competent for it to succeed, since it teaches home safety and preventive health to the elderly and young families through awareness-raising and individual mentoring by volunteers, and the ways to achieve this are laden with culturally sensitive issues in different populations, especially in the Haredi and Arab sectors. Currently, the project operates only in Jerusalem, but the model can be copied and replicated throughout the country.

Aliza explains about Living Safer, Living Longer

Making the project fully culturally competent was not an easy task, it essentially meant needing to create and develop 3 different projects – one for the ‘general’ Jewish population, one for the Haredi population, and one for the Arab population. Content (from flyers and posters to explanatory materials for lectures and mentoring sessions) and training methods were specifically tailored for each group (appropriate for Haredi, Arab as well as ‘general’ Jewish beneficiaries), as were training aides, explanatory materials. Volunteers needed to be recruited and trained in each group as well. Checklists of what the volunteers were looking for in the homes were also adapted to both the age (elderly vs. young families) and group with which they were associated. For example, chains to secure hot water urns (used on Shabbat and often the cause of burns among Haredi children) are distributed in Haredi families, whereas there is no need for this in other groups.

We also welcomed special guests from the Bnei Zion hospital in Haifa, who shared their experience of assimilating cultural competence in the hospital. Orly Altman, a general nurse and the Cultural Competency Coordinator at Bnei Zion, and Ragda Halabi, a midwife at the hospital, told how the project began and gave a short lecture.

Orly said that the first step was to establish a steering committee for cultural competency that consisted of representatives from a variety of communities, with a goal to train agents of change to promote cultural competency that promotes mutual respect and human dignity. The committee created a document with important information about each community, including the rules of “do’s and don’ts,” and each member of the committee built a training session about the community to which he or she belongs, and chose how to present it.

Orly, presenting her experience at Bnei Zion Hospital in Haifa

Ragda, a member of the Druze community, introduced us to the principles of the Druze religion: the life cycle and different rituals, the status of women, visitng the sick, escorting Druze religious women for medical exams and more.

The meeting was fascinating and the participants learned more about Druze culture and religion and their connections to health.

Thanks to Michal Schuster for organizing the meetings. And of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, for its continued support of Cultural Competency over the past decade.

orna2019-12-23T07:32:24+00:00December 15th, 2019|Blog, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Living Safer Living Longer|

An Evening of Cultural Competence for Health Care Rights Volunteers from the Jerusalem Municipality

On Tuesday, November 5, we held a special evening for Health Care Rights Volunteers, which was organized by the Community Services Department of the Jerusalem Municipality, with an emphasis on cultural Competency.

The volunteers come from various organizations, such as Santé Israël‘s Bikur Olim project, Kivunim from Hadassah Hospital, the Segula unit at Sha’are Zedek Medical Center, and more, listened to a lecture from our own Aliza Shabo-Hayut, who described the experience of a fictitious immigrant who encounters cultural barriers everywhere – in the education system, on public transport, at the National Insurance Institute and in the hospital. She also described the tools for cultural competence among volunteers are extremely important in helping immigrants and those from different cultures obtain their health rights and navigate the Israeli health system. The lecture received excellent responses and the volunteers noted the importance of the topic and the contribution of the lecture to their work.

Aliza speaking to volunteers

After the lecture specific complex inter-cultural situations were demonstrated through playback theater.

Volunteers night – show time

The choice of cultural competency as the main theme of a special evening recognizing volunteers is part of the process of assimilating cultural competence in the municipal Community Services Department that we’ve been leading in recent years.

Volunteers night – playback time

Many thanks to Sarit Lipkin Wolf from the Community Services Department, for organizing the evening, and to Marie Avigad, coordinator of Sante Israel, who was part of the steering committee for the evening and who brought the subject to the fore. And of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, for its continued support of Cultural Competency over the past decade.

Here’s the post from the Sante Israel Facebook page (in Hebrew and French):

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for its continued support of Santé Israël over the years, and to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support to the JICC cultural competence program.

orna2019-11-16T10:24:20+00:00November 15th, 2019|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Jerusalem Municipality|