Blog | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Sichatuna – To Your Health! Joining Forces with Atta’a

At Atta’a we’re all about joint work, helping to advance rights realization in all areas of life. A recent joint project, that includes Atta’a and Michal Gutman-Kremer from our Cultural Competency Desk, with the ‘Like Me’ organization and their Arabic-language web site, Sichatuna (which means ‘our health’ in Arabic).

A look at the Sichatuna web site

Today, the site includes two online communities – one for diabetes and one for obesity. They are managed by physicians who advise and answer questions to help inform different treatment options and promote a healthier lifestyle.

We are helping to make the site more accessible and more adapted to the needs of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, in order to raise awareness of these health issues and to give residents an additional source for consultation and information. Our first joint activity revolved around International Diabetes Day on November 14. A number of Jerusalem hospitals distributed flyers to promote the site’s activities. The results are significant – their Facebook page gained about 300 from East Jerusalem as a result of this video with Dr. Hashem about diabetes:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of Atta’a.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:54:13+00:00January 12th, 2020|Attaa, Blog|

Continuing Cultural Competency Training at the Herzfeld Geriatric Hospital

Herzfeld Rehabilitation Hospital in Gedera has begun a process of cultural competence and we’re proud to be part of it. You can read more about our first meeting, here. The hospital belongs to the Clalit Health Services and specializes in the care, support and rehabilitation of elderly patients, and for those with complex medical conditions. We’ve delivered two workshops at the hospital, and the tools and principles of cultural competency that included in the workshops were specially adapted for the needs of the hospital. Communication at the hospital takes place not only with the patients but also with their families, guardians, and caregivers, often patients’ foreign caregivers who stay alongside the patients.

A second cultural competency workshop at the Herzfeld Geriatric Hospital

About 40 employees from all professions and cultural identities participated in the workshops, the second of which took place on December 23, 2019. In the accepting atmosphere of the workshop, the different caregiving professionals shared their experiences and dilemmas. One participant shared the process with the family whose young son was on a respirator in the hospital. The father, a dominant figure in the family, who is also the guardian, is very worried about his son but sometimes his involvement can hurt the son’s treatment. The other family members cannot challenge the authority of the father, who is also the head of the clan. Sensitive and creative ways were needed to keep the son without hurting the father.

Another issue was, how do we deal both with the need for patients to rest, and with the fact that different cultural traditions encourage visits from friends and family during visiting hours? How can we How to overcome religious, cultural and gender conflicts in the food that is served at the hospital?

Learning through real-life examples

And one of the cases that made us most emotional – the daughter of an elderly Ethiopian patient, who is determined to comply with her mother’s demand not to amputate her leg, even if it costs her her life. The need to respect the mother’s wishes at all costs, which was met with a patronizing attitude from one of the professionals. The daughter was torn between different cultural values - respect for her mother’s wishes, respect for medical authority, difficulty in directly challenging authority figures, and a loss of faith in the system.

This story served as the basis for our practice session, with experienced medical actress Hanin Tarbia, who has been working with the JICC for a decade.

Here’s feedback we received from the hospital administration:

We would like to acknowledge the great privilege that we have had in participating in the fascinating workshop you delivered today to the staff of the Herzfeld Geriatric Hospital. The workshop was instructive, enlightening, empowering and very interesting. Your easy-to-understand language, the accessibility of the tools you taught and your vast amount of knowledge, alongside your extraordinary sensitivity and humor, will accompany us and all the participants of the workshop!

The participants felt comfortable participating and sharing and expressed a great deal of interest in this important topic, and were thirsty for the large amount of information they received.

We, too, at the JICC hope that we helped the hospital establish the foundations for a meaningful process of assimilating the principles of cultural competency at the hospital. There is no doubt that the dedicated staff who participated in the workshop can serve as ambassadors for assimilating tools and principles of cultural competence in the hospital.

Many thanks to Herzfeld Medical Center for organizing the workshop.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:56:08+00:00January 8th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Window to Mount Zion – Christmas Eve – Continuing a Tradition on Mount Zion

Every year hundreds of visitors, most of them Jewish Israelis, come to Dormition Church on Christmas Eve.

Window to Mount Zion - helping the service

Window to Mount Zion – helping the Christmas Eve service

In order to make the service more accessible to visitors, instead of holding the Christmas Eve Mass in German, they held it mostly in English, partly in Hebrew, and even in Arabic. This year, even the sermon was delivered in Hebrew – fluent Hebrew – by Father Daniel.

Joining the monks at the Dormition Abbey on Christmas Eve

Delivering the Christmas Eve service

Although the Dormtition Abbey has a large church sanctuary that can hold hundreds of people, the community of monks who live there is very small. And during the ceremony and its preparations, they can’t always make sure the audience is calm or explain where the bathrooms are to everyone who needs them, or just be there as a helping hand. This is already the fourth year that the dedicated volunteers from Window to Mount Zion have helped out at the Christmas Eve service, and we are proud to have a part in helping the service run smoothly and without incident. We were delighted to take part on this special night.

Window to Mount Zion volunteers

Follow this link to read more (in Hebrew) about Christmas Eve, on the Window to Mount Zion web site. Here’s a short video of the event that was published on Window to Mount Zion’s Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of Window to Mount Zion.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T21:02:22+00:00January 5th, 2020|Blog, Mount Zion|

Have a Happy – and Safe! – Chanukah, from Living Safer, Living Longer

On December 29, 2019 our initiative Living Safer, Living Longer participated in a fantastic Chanuka Happening event at the Well-Baby Center in the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood Ramat Shlomo. The event included a number of activity stations. At the Living Safer, Living Longer station, children prepared a game in which they helped make donuts safely, thus preventing accidents at home.

Preparing games, making homes safer

The children received dreidels (svivonim), and the parents were invited to receive free personal mentoring on how to ensure that their home is safe for the whole family.

Playing and learning to be safe at home

Many thanks to the Ramat Shlomo Well-baby Clinic for their hospitality, and of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of Living Safer, Living Longer.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:48:09+00:00January 3rd, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Living Safer, Living Longer and MiniActive Joining Forces to Make East Jerusalem Safer for Families

Living Safer, Living Longer and MiniActive have enjoyed a fruitful partnership since the project began.

MiniActive Living Safer, Living Longer, visiting local fire department

One group has already been trained, and we are now training a second group of women to advance home safety and preventive health measures from within the community. This group began training on November 12, and they’re already practicing doing individual mentoring in homes, together with our staff.

An integral part of the training is fire prevention, since house fires are a huge problem in East Jerusalem. (You might remember the fire prevention training from the first group, with this unforgettable video here.)

As part of this training group members visited the local fire department in Wadi Joz on December 10, 2019. Here’s a Facebook post (in Arabic, of course) from the MiniActive Facebook page:

And many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of Living Safer, Living Longer and MiniActive, and to the Natan Fund for their additional support of MiniActive.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:49:46+00:00December 27th, 2019|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer, MiniActive|

Atta’a – Awareness-Raising Workshops to Improve Access to Rights

Atta’a is much more than a web site and Facebook page. An important part of Atta’a’s work is also giving lectures and workshops in the community.

Daud, Atta’a director, giving a workshop

During the past few months, Atta’a has been busy giving workshops – sometimes twice a day – on a number of different subjects. These include:

Rights from the National Insurance Institute in general
Rights from the National Insurance Institute on payments for the elderly, welfare payments, unemployment payments
Discounts on municipal property taxes
Rights from the Ministry of the Interior
Rights in health care

Sometimes he gave lectures by himself

And sometimes he gave lectures with Nadine, who is developing the health rights section of the Atta’a web site:

Lecturing with Nadine

All over East Jerusalem, from Sur Baher to Wadi Joz to Beit Hanina:

In the Wadi Joz Community Center

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Leichtag Foundation for their support of Atta’a.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:51:32+00:00December 25th, 2019|Attaa, Blog|

Santé Israël – Increasing Reach Together with Maccabi Health Services and Jerusalem Municipality

On Thursday, December 5, 2019, Santé Israël, together with Maccabi Health Services, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Qualita organization for French-speaking immigrants, and the National Insurance Institute, held an information evening about health care rights. Some 80 people were in attendance!

Raising awareness about health care rights

The meeting was held at the Qualita offices, in downtown Jerusalem.

A lot of information was provided

Carol Azoulay, who is in charge of working with the French-speaking community in Jerusalem and the central region for Maccabi Health Services, spoke about rights included in the HMO’s supplemental insurance plans. Many members are now aware of rights they are eligible for.

From experts in a lot of areas

Ayala Blum, Director of the Office for Rights Realization for French-speaking immigrants of the Jerusalem Municipality, who also works for Qualita, talked about her role as a source of information about rights in general, above and beyond the health care field. Dr. Yves Bensoussan, a doctor in at the National Insurance Institute in Jerusalem, who helps many French speakers, spoke about common issues: disability for children and adults, rights for seniors who are retiring. And of course, Santé Israël Director Marie Avigad introduced Santé Israël.

Cooperation between a number of bodies, with best results for everyone

Then there was a time for questions and the issues raised:

What are the health insurance supplementary cover? What are the rates?
Rights regarding maternity leave for a salaried employee and an independent worker
The difference between HMO and the National Insurance Institute
Different situations that enable people to become eligible for disability payments
What is nursing care insurance and what is the difference between nursing care insurance provided by the HMO’s and nursing care benefits provided by the National Insurance Institute? (Answer on the Santé Israël website: https://www.sante.org.il/couvertures-des-caisses/ and https://www.sante.org.il/personnes-agees/_)
Where to go in an emergency
Discounts for dental care for children and the elderly
Eyewear for children and adults
Work disability
Social security rights for a patient being treated with chemotherapy
Mental health – How to get treatment through HMOs
Free telephone translation service from the Ministry of Health and the fact that doctors are required to use it if requested by the patient
MDA services – payment and situations where there is no charge

After this session, Marie received a number of requests on Facebook to have similar meetings in other cities, such as Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netanya, in the north. Stay tuned for more!

And here’s a Facebook post from Sante Israel:

And another from Qualita:

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for their continued support of Santé Israël over the years.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T21:00:19+00:00December 22nd, 2019|Blog, Cultural Competence, Santé Israël - French internet platform on the Israeli healthcare system|

The Little Prince – Changing Municipal Priorities

We’ve written in the past about how the Little Prince – Cleaning Up Jerusalem Together is changing priorities across the city, including in the Municipality. You can read examples here, here, and here.

Along this line, we recently came across this article in the Jerusalem Post, which sums up Mayor Moshe Lion’s first year in office. Proof of the success of the Little Prince project, cleanliness has been on of the Municipality’s main focuses this first year. Here is what the article had to say about it:

Lion identified four major challenges plaguing Jerusalem: housing; job opportunities for young, educated people; traffic; and cleanliness, (emphasis ours) and he told The Jerusalem Post that he has acted on all fronts to strengthen the city.

The article went on to describe his efforts:

“The city is much cleaner now than before I started,” [Moshe Lion] told the Post.

Lion has moved to bolster the city’s underground waste collection system, which includes a network of underground waste containers.

The move threatened Jerusalem’s cats, which were accustomed to eating out of the large green trash receptacles that forever littered Jerusalem’s sidewalks and alleyways. To ensure that the cats remained healthy, Lion erected some 150,000 cat-food stands that are filled by a team of community volunteers.

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, commented how instituting Saturday night trash collection across the city has significantly impacted the holy city’s cleanliness standards. Moreover, she added, Lion is immediately responsive to mess, if pointed out to him. She said sometimes she will see an area in need of cleaning. She’ll snap a picture on her phone and send it to him with the coordinates. Almost instantly, he will send a team out to take care of the problem.

Lion has also secured a NIS 200m. – NIS 50m. per year for the next four years – investment to repave roads and upgrade sidewalks with stones, benches and trash receptacles.

The city has also issued a poster, summarizing the city’s accomplishments in improving cleanliness in the city:

Jerusalem’s accomplishments in cleaning up the city

The poster says:

In 2019 more than NIS 200 million has been invested in cleaning up Jerusalem.

We’ve added 600 sanitation workers.
We’ve operated 50 street-cleaning machines and 30 cars to deal with trash.
We’re sweeping streets by hand daily in the neighborhoods and are cleaning the streets daily.
We’ve begun collecting trash on Saturday nights throughout the city.
We’ve begun collecting tree cuttings and other landscaping waste every Tuesday.
We’ve installed 650 underground trash receptacles.
We’ve cleared away 2,500 abandoned cars.
We’ve established new public restrooms.

After a year in office, Mayor Moshe Lion was interviewed on the main national Israeli news program of “Kan”. The main title of the interview, as can be seen in the picture below was: Jerusalem Mayor announces (paraphrased from Hebrew): “let’s do more cleaning, less ‘vision-talk'”.

Jerusalem Mayor announces: “let’s do more cleaning, less ‘vision-talk'”

Let’s hope that the city and the Little Prince continue to make Jerusalem a cleaner city. Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince.

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T21:15:55+00:00December 19th, 2019|Blog, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

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|

MiniActive at the Gishurim Conference

On December 3, 2019, our Intisar, Director of MiniActive, led a round table about MiniActive at the annual Gishurim Conference. This conference is organized each year for those involved with community mediation centers throughout Israel. We’ve been among the organizers of this conference since its beginning.

MiniActive as an example of communication between residents and the municipality in Jerusalem

The conference included a number of lectures, as well as round-table sessions with a number of initiatives. Intisar spoke about the history and rationale of MiniActive, and how it has gained the successes it has.

She also emphasized 5 main principles that guide MiniActive:

The basis of work needs to start from the bottom-up, from the grassroots toward the local authority.
Small success in a short time period (no more than 3 weeks) are important to the process of building confidence and trust.
It is important to choose one precise issue to take care of, preferably in the local area, in order to be able to follow-up and to demonstrate success.
PR as a way to pressure the local authority into action and to raise public awareness about the problem. Traditional and social media as effective ways to document the problem and provide visual messaging to officials who can help solve the problem.
It is important to publish “before” and “after” photos to the public (via social media) to demonstrate success and to build confidence in the initiative.

Here’s a post (in Hebrew) about the conference, which gathered 500 from all around Israel who are involved in community mediation centers.

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

Naomi Roff2020-01-10T20:44:39+00:00December 13th, 2019|Blog, MiniActive|