Identity Groups and Conflicts | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

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|

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|

Neighborhood Shared Living Forum in Gilo

“I lived in Ramat Eshkol before coming to live her [in Gilo],” said a secular Jew, who participated in the Shared Living Forum that we just finished facilitating in Gilo. “One day, some of the ultra-Orthodox residents were violent toward my family. I knew then it was time to leave.” ”That is not your problem,” responded an ultra-Orthodox man, another participant in the group. “It is our problem. We [the ultra-Orthodox community in Gilo] won’t let that happen here.”

These two people are part of an 80-member Neighborhood Shared Living Forum in Gilo, which sits on the southern tip of Jerusalem. The Forum includes residents from every possible group – religious, secular, ultra-orthodox, immigrants and veteran citizens, and more. Over a period of two months, in four sessions, they formulated a community vision (see the Hebrew document) for shared living community dialogue, as well as developed initiatives to advance that goal. An atmosphere of mutual respect pervaded all the discussions, and everyone was engaged in and committed to the process. In a neighborhood as diverse as Gilo, this was quite a significant achievement.

Gilo Shared Living Forum

The first workshop concentrated on introducing the process and discussing examples of positive aspects of a diverse community in Gilo in the past, challenges of having a diverse communities, and their vision for an ideal situation in Gilo.In ensuing workshops the residents focused on principles of community dialogue, including how four principles of community dialogue – dialogue, partnership, fairness and values – can be practically assimilated into community life. Residents also came to agreement on a set of principles for shared living in Gilo, and developed a number of initiatives, from joint study of texts, to work with teenagers, to inter-generational projects to building a community mediation framework. We will be following up with the Gilo Community Council in helping to get these initiatives off the ground.

Discussing Issues

The Neighborhood Shared Living Forum is part of our greater involvement in the Gilo community over the past few years, part of our Deliberative Democracy in Jerusalem Neighborhoods project, supported by the UJA-Federation of New York. You can read about other processes we’ve facilitated in Gilo here, here and here.

Naomi Roff2016-08-27T17:11:21+00:00February 5th, 2015|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Gilo Community Dialogue, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Inter-Cultural Community Dialogue, Jewish Religious Denominations, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Urban Park in the Wadi – Engaging Diverse Populations in Planning Processes in Kiryat Hayovel

Today, Kiryat Hayovel is a neighborhood of contrasts. There are poor residents of North African descent, who were settled in the neighborhood in the 1950’s and 60’s in the tent camp (ma’abarah) and hurriedly-constructed asbestos huts. There are the young, academically-educated professional families who have been moving in, in search of affordable housing not far from the city center. There are the well-to-do who live in large, detached houses with magnificent views of the Jerusalem Hills. There are newer, struggling immigrants, who joined the many of the veteran immigrants in large Eastern European-style tenement housing. They are secular, traditional, religious, and ultra-Orthodox.

How can they come together to plan a neighborhood park?

And this wasn’t just any park. The idea was to discuss future planning for what is coined the “Asbestonim Wadi,” after the asbestos buildings that were used to house new immigrants, which that used to line the valley. The valley, which runs between the Kiryat Hayovel and Kiryat Menachem neighborhoods, today includes a large, worn-down play area, a community garden, a community theater initiative, as well as a large area that is undeveloped altogether.

Valley today, one of the last of the original buildings

In fact, they can, and they did. As part of our Deliberative Democracy in the neighborhoods program, supported by the UJA-Federation of New York, we facilitated a fascinating process of participatory democracy in the community, in cooperation with the community council staffs of both Kiryat Hayovel and Kiryat Menachem, municipal planning professionals and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The process included some 150 residents, of all ages, from all backgrounds. In a series of 10 meetings, participants received an overview of the history of the valley; they learned different principles of design and planning in outdoor venues; they mapped the area with aerial photographs, and gave suggestions and opinions on how the valley was to be planned and the roles it will play in residents lives. After each lecture there was a discussion on how the principles learned in the lecture can apply to the valley.

Study and discussion meeting

“There was a crazy amount of positive energy at these meetings,” noted our Tal Kligman, who led the process for the JICC. “Everyone, from all walks of life, had ideas, and everyone wanted to contribute. When we planned the meetings, we expected to have 20 -30 residents at each of one. Instead 50 – 60 residents showed up each time!”

The participants enthusiasm spread to engage not only adults in the area, but the children as well. Teachers from the Guatemala Elementary School in Kiryat Menachem built a 3-lesson curriculum that asked the children what they wanted to see in the valley, and are also being taken into consideration in the planning.

Touring the Wadi

The study and planning sessions have finished, so what’s the next stage? The Bezalel students built a model based on the principles agreed upon in the meetings, and feedback was received from the residents. The results of this process have now been passed on to the professional planners. We can’t wait to see how this turns out.

The Bezalel model

Naomi Roff2015-05-16T19:27:21+00:00January 25th, 2015|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, Kiryat Yovel|

Emergency Readiness Networks and MiniActive – Working Together in a Major Storm to Save Lives

Beginning of January 2015, the whole city of Jerusalem braced for what was touted to be a repeat of the Great Storm of 2013 – heavy snow pileups, cold temperatures, strong winds, the works. While pictures of snow in Jerusalem are beautiful, dealing with the effects of such weather, can be disastrous. And for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem – where infrastructure is weak and housing is crowded to begin with, where services are inaccessible in Arabic, where bureaucratic and other restrictions often prevent Israeli emergency services and service providers from responding in real time – the effects of a severe snow storm can be disastrous even more, and potentially fatal. It is for this reason that the Emergency Readiness Networks (ERNs) were first formed in 2012. In the storm of December 2013, they, together with our MiniActive network of women volunteers, acted tirelessly and valiantly around the clock to help residents weather the storm. This year, with a network of ERNs in 10 neighborhoods throughout Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, they again joined forces with MiniActive to help ensure residents’ safety and enable them to get through the storm.

Preparing for the Storm

Utilizing lessons learned from last year, the ERN’s worked in impressive coordination with the MiniActive network. The ERN’s ensured that the roads were safe and clear, fires were being fought, residents rescued, and ambulances transported the sick to hospitals. The MiniActive network helped tens of thousands in their support and organization. They led drives for blankets, heaters, and food, which the ERN members distributed to the old, sick and needy. They coordinated complaints to the electric company for power outages, the water company for flooding, and to other service providers as needed.

As with any emergency preparation, the real work did not begin on January 6, when the rain and gale-force winds started. In the week beforehand ERN heads in Jerusalem underwent refresher exercises, where they reviewed the various protocols. They were then sent to renew contact with the various professionals, owners of the bulldozers, 4×4’s and other heavy equipment, take stock of shovels, hoes, salt, and more. Also, a special emergency grant from the Jerusalem Foundation enabled the MiniActive network to distribute over 200 warm blankets to needy households. The MiniActive Facebook page also served as a massive bulletin board, posting guidelines from the ERNs, emergency numbers, and helpful information produced by the municipality.

Taking Stock

Thus, when the storm hit on January 6-7, everyone was ready, or as ready as they could be. Snow plows worked in the north of the city, clearing the road from Shuafat to the Qalandia crossing as soon as there was snow on the road. At the same time, crews in Silwan, Ras el-Amud and Umm Tuba were distributing heaters and blankets to needy residents. When houses in A-Tur and Issawiya were flooded, the families were evacuated, the problems were reported, and the families received help in relocating until the problems were fixed.

Burnt house

Unfortunately, there were a number of extreme incidents – house fires in the Shuafat Refugee Camp and other places, and a house that partially collapsed in the Old City. But the ERNs worked tirelessly to ensure the residents’ safety, and MiniActive was active in collecting money and furniture and a range of household items to help the families get back on their feet as quickly as possible.

Collecting blankets

Efficient, Coordinated Work Result of Extended Preparation

The ERNs were able to act so quickly and efficiently because they had undergone extensive training and drilling, months beforehand. In 2013 we supervised a ‘Training the Trainers’ course, operated by the Palestinian organization “the Jerusalem Emergency Readiness Teams”, that enabled graduates to initiate ERNs in their own neighborhoods. The 8 new ERNs, which were formed and trained throughout 2014, are the result of this course. They include:

15 participants from the Shuafat refugee camp, who were trained from 30/9 until 30/12/2013
22 participants from Kufr Aqeb, who were trained from 15/10/2013 to 28/01/2014
19 participants from Isawiyya, who were trained from 26/10/2013 to 15/02/2014
14 participants from Sheikh Sa’ad, who were trained from 1/3/2014 until 27/04/2014
14 participants from Wadi Al-Joz, who were trained from 12/4/2014 until 20/07/2014
17 participants from Shuafat, who were trained from 10/9/2014 until 11/12/2014
17 participants from Umm Tuba, who finished training at the end of 2014
14 participants from Bet Hanina, who will finish the training on February 5, 2015

They joined the veteran Network in Sur Baher, which was originally founded in 2012 and the Jabel El-Mukaber Network, which was founded in 2013.

Fire and ambulance helping the family whose house collapsed in the Old City

The establishment of an ERN requires a detailed planning process. First, appropriate team members are recruited, and the exact physical boundaries of the ERN are defined. The next step is to map the various aspects of action: what type of potential emergencies they will be prepared to respond to; what types of special conditions exist in that neighborhood (geographical terrain, roads, roadblocks, population overcrowding, structural weaknesses, etc.); what types of resources exist in the neighborhood – professionals, equipment, facilities, etc. Action plans are then defined, including establishing which emergency providers are to respond to which scenarios, and how they can be reached. The organizational structure of the ERN must also be defined and responsibilities distributed – a volunteer coordinator is chosen, as are a logistics team, a team that maintains contact with Israeli service providers, a social worker team, medical team, evacuation team and more, and the responsibilities of each person on the team are determined. The last and final step are simulations of emergency situations to ensure that the process works smoothly.

Clearing snow and ice in Issawiya

Taking Emergency Readiness – and Community Solidarity-Building – to the Next Step

We have come a long way, but much remains to be done. ERNs have been established in less than half of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Existing teams must be further cultivated to maintain and improve their efficiency. In addition, the plan is to further develop existing teams, so that current members themselves become team leaders, with each person in charge of a separate aspect, such as communication, facilities, equipment, the needy, and team leaders must recruit and train those teams. A detailed facilities mapping has also yet to be performed in the neighborhoods. This mapping will include the locations of different facilities, such as mosques, schools, doctors’ offices, bakeries; their contact information and how they can be used in an emergency.

Food for distribution in Issawiya

The ERNs and MiniActive have shown us once again that responding to emergencies is not just about repairing electricity and draining flooding. Both projects aim to create teams and networks that build community as well. People with different areas of expertise from medicine, social work, electricity to bulldozer operator – all work together to help their neighbors and their neighborhood.

We would like to thank Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of this project, and the Daimler AG, which supports the project via the Jerusalem Foundation. And of course, this project would be nowhere without the training and on-site coordination of the “Jerusalem Emergency Readiness Teams” organization, and the volunteers from the ERNs and MiniActive.

Plowing snow

Naomi Roff2016-04-28T15:42:42+00:00January 22nd, 2015|Blog, Effective Activism, Emergency Readiness Networks, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs|

Using Deliberative Democracy to Solve Problems in Har Homa

Within the framework of our Deliberative Democracy program, supported by the UJA-Federation of New York, since September we have been facilitating a problem-solving process, together with the merchants, municipal officials and community professionals in the neighborhood of Har Homa. Har Homa is a relatively new neighborhood in southern Jerusalem, and as its name suggests, it, and its commercial center, is built on rather hilly terrain. In an opening meeting we held in September, merchants complained of a number of different issues, such as: lack of parking which causes people to park illegally and block passageways; empty tree beds which have become a safety hazard; lack of shade; problems of litter, when much is blown around by the wind; treatment by municipal inspectors; and a feeling of disconnect between the various municipal bodies in contact with the merchants.

Meeting with merchants, residents, community and municipal officials

Our first line of business was to define steps toward possible solutions. On the short term, the merchants formed a merchants association and promised to keep the area clean, and the municipality promised to give tickets only for severe infringements. We then arranged for a number of meetings to come to the best long-term solutions – meetings about traffic patterns, with the municipal department of business development, sanitation and municipal enforcement, with city and neighborhood planners to revise planning of the area, and a meeting with the community center, about possible events that could be held in the commercial center to support the local merchants.

As a result of the meetings, the municipality planted trees in the tree beds, the merchants association hired a cleaner to keep the entire area clean. The merchants are in direct contact with the municipality’s regional supervisor, who is assisting them in their contacts with the municipality. A transportation engineer is re-evaluating the parking, traffic flow and public transportation in the area, in hopes that budgets will be allocated to the project soon. Everyone is more satisfied than before about the situation, and capacity has been built such that direct communication takes place between the merchants and the various bodies, without need for our intervention.

Naomi Roff2015-01-23T13:20:01+00:00January 12th, 2015|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Identity Groups and Conflicts|

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