rachelly | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

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So far rachelly has created 7 blog entries.

HoliGame – Playing All the Way to Diversity in Organizations

We’ve spoken about our cooperation with the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity here, and here we discussed our joint project, the HoliGame, which deals with dilemmas and issues related to holidays and cultural events in organizations, especially when the different commemorations conflict or lead to a conflict between identities and individuals in the organization.

The HoliGame at Kfar Shaul on September 3, 2020

The month of September was full of HoliGame events in a variety of organizations. On September 3, we used the game in a diversity management workshop at the Jerusalem Center for Mental Health at Kfar Shaul, which dealt with the way cultural competency coordinators are responsible for leading culturally sensitive measures – and constant dialogue regarding potentially flashpoints throughout the year in order to maintain a respectful and inclusive work environment.

The HoliGame for Businesses September 9, 2020

On September 9 the HoliGame was used in a workshop for nearly 30 human resources managers and diversity managers in leading companies. Here, too, the issues need to be dealt with sensitively and in a way that the shows the important role of the management in creating a sense of belonging to the organization. Above is a glimpse of the meeting for business and companies.

Israeli Hope in Academia September 10, 2020

The issue of diversity and cultural competence affects academia as well. On September 10, 2020 we held a workshop for Coordinators for the Israeli Hope in Academia program, which seeks to integrate all the ‘tribes’ in Israel into Israeli higher education. We spoke about everyone who works on campus – from the lecturers to administrative staff, must still be careful not to exclude populations from different identities, and how issues can be addressed even in an age where the campus has become primarily virtual.

Invitation to play the HoliGame

We’ve seen the different issues that the HoliGame has raised and enabled leaders from a variety of different types of organizations to create deeper understandings of both the issues at hand as well as processes to resolve those issues in a respectful and inclusive manner. So thank you to those who’ve played, and we can’t wait to play more!

rachelly2020-10-23T10:46:36+00:00September 23rd, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence|

HoliGame – A Million Ways to Improve Cultural Competence in the Workplace

In Israel it seems that there is a holiday or national commemoration for each of its identities or communities – nearly every day. How should it be celebrated? What’s the best way to commemorate in a culturally competent manner?

In other words, how do we create an inclusive and culturally competent environment in organizations and in the workplace?

Before COVID-19, we created HoliGame, together with the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity at the Ministry of Labor and Welfare and the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity. (You can read about it here.) The HoliGame is a great opportunity to become familiar with different communities’ holidays and commemorative days, and enables participants to deal with questions and dilemmas through an enjoyable and interactive game.

The original HoliGame

In the wake of COVID-19, we became even more creative, creating an online interactive version of the game, based on the popular television hit, Who Wants to be Millionaire. We launched the new game on July 27, in an event that integrated questions and dilemmas, with one goal – to be the first to reach a million!

The new online HoliGam, based on the popular, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Just like on TV, the 20 particiants were asked increasingly difficult questions about different holidays, how to celebrate and commemorate them in a diverse workplace. Questions included: What do you do if different holidays coincide? How do you make everyone feel a part of company-wide celebrations? What do you do if someone isn’t satisfied?

The game includes dozens of questions, safety nets, fascinating discussions – and the opportunity to reach the top-prize question.

Discussion dilemmas of diversity and inclusion on the way to the million

The HoliGame targets diverse organizations and companies, who seek to become more culturally competent. Since its launch organizations have enthusiastically engaged participants to talk freely about diversity, inclusion and cultural competency, and improve practices in the workplace. We anticipate doing more and more of these kinds of online workshops.

So who’s up for a round of HoliGame?Here’s a post about it in Facebook (in Hebrew)

rachelly2020-09-04T16:59:53+00:00September 5th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in the Workplace|

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|

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|

Managing Diversity and Cultural Competence in a Mixed Society – Workshop for Unistream

We’d been working with the Unistream organization for a few months on ensuring that their programming is culturally competent. When Israel went on lockdown in response to the coronavirus crisis, all (or nearly all) of our previously scheduled workshops and training sessions went online.

Bar Biran, Director of the Shared Living program, Unistream, with Dr. Racheli Ashwal a few minutes before the workshop

So on May 10, we held a Zoom session with Bar Biran, Shared Society program manager at Unistream on Cultural Competence and Diversity Management in a Mixed Society, together with the project’s managers and instructors. Bar had asked us to help her with numerous questions that come up regularly when working with a multitude of identities and ethnicities. To help her and her staff deal with those dilemmas, we designed a workshop that would give special tools and skills to the program’s instructors and coordinators.

The concept that guides us when consulting and advising organizations

The workshop participants learned the guiding principles of cultural competency that should influence everything they do, as they lead programs with participants from diverse identities.

rachelly2020-07-31T09:59:44+00:00May 15th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in the Workplace|

Remote Medical Interpretation during the Coronavirus Crisis

Today’s world of coronavirus has, on the one hand, brought health care front and center. On the other hand, it has raised numerous new challenges, such as in the world of interpreting, especially – but not only – in medical interpreting.

The world of interpreting (oral translation) is undergoing significant changes during this period. Interpreters in meetings and conferences need to adapt to new conditions, such as the fact that they’re not in the same room or hall as the participants. They also do not always have the appropriate technical equipment to translate without interruption – sometime there is an unstable Internet connection, sometimes they need to translate to multiple participants, some of whom have background noise. In general – the overall uncertainty of this entire situation has upended the norms we had been used to.

Zoom on remote interpreting

Medical interpretation has faced significant challenges in Corona times. Since caregivers must provide urgent care to a broad range of communities, medical interpreters are more essential than ever. However, because of the rapid changes in healthcare provision – both for “regular” patients as well as for those with the coronavirus – many problems arise. For example, according to this recent report from the United States, in some cases, minorities who do not speak English receive misinformation or no information at all because there is no easy and available way to communicate with them through translation. In other cases, medical interpreters are exposed to infection because they do not receive minimal personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks. Many healthcare services did not prepare in time to provide remote interpretation services, and caregivers are not trained in using telephone or video interpretation.

At the same time, many interpreters are at home, some of them losing their jobs because they were mainly engaged in face-to face interpretation. Alongside the many difficulties, this situation can also be a great opportunity for learning and professional development. In recent weeks there have been numerous webinars about remote interpretation and we decided to be the first to discuss it in Israel.

Over 30 people in meeting

This week we held a special Zoom meeting on “Remote Interpretation during the Corona Period.” At the meeting, we presented the benefits and challenges of remote interpretation (which existed only in healthcare in Israel before the crisis), technology infrastructure necessary for remote interpretation, and tips for entering the field for interpreters who had not performed this kind of interpreting before. More than 30 interpreters: graduates of our medical interpreting courses, freelance interpreters, and students, participated.

Among the participants were representatives of the Tene Briut organization, which operates Voice for Health, the first telephone medical interpreting service in Israel. Iris Malako, a medical interpreter who was a former cultural mediator, presented the difference between face-to-face interpreting, cultural mediation, and telephone interpreting. Remote interpreting is more complex emotionally, technically, and from a communication standpoint, but it does have many benefits – it is immediate, focused, and there is more anonymity for the patient (which is why patients from a small community like Ethiopian-Israelis are happy to use it when discussing sensitive issues).

Iris Malako and Ilan Yavor, a Hebrew-English conference interpreter, helped us illustrate simultaneous remote interpreting, and we introduced several other technology infrastructures that allow freelance interpreters to provide this service from home.

The response to the meeting was excellent, and we hope it will encourage interpreters to learn more about remote interpreting now, and for the future, and broaden their professional skills.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem.

rachelly2020-05-16T05:59:23+00:00May 1st, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Diversity Management Workshop in Mental Health – for Kfar Shaul

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

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

אורנה שני פותחת את סדנת ניהול הגיוון בכפר שאול

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

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

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

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

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

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