Palestinians/Arabs | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

MiniActive Courses: Teaching First Aid to Palestinian Women in East Jerusalem

As noted last year, our MiniActive volunteers work to advance social problems as well as physical problems. This includes expanding education about first aid amongst volunteers. Last year’s first aid course included 20 women from all over Jerusalem; this year, there were 20 – 25 women in each of three locations: Kufr Aqeb in the north, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, and Umm Tuba in the south.

First aid course 2014

This first course was a basic, 20-hour course, which began in March and is running until the beginning of May. There is significant interest in a more in-depth course (88 hours of instruction), which will enable graduates to also earn money as qualified chaperones for school trips.

CPR demonstration

Naomi Roff2014-05-31T17:32:30+00:00April 20th, 2014|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Cultural Competency in Mental Health Care in Jerusalem – First Graduating Class of Interpreters

We’ve written here and here about the importance of making mental health services – especially in Jerusalem – culturally competent, and the long road that lies ahead. On April 8 we made huge strides in the right direction, presenting graduates of the first class of medical interpreters at the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Kfar Shaul with their completion certificates.

These 17 graduates – bilingual workers at the main public mental health facility in Kfar Shaul as well as at other facilities throughout the Jerusalem area – represented the diversity of Jerusalem. They came from a broad range of professions at the Center – from nurses to other treatment professionals, as well as a diversity of backgrounds, speaking Arabic, Russian and Amharic as mother tongues. “Cultural Competency is a must in every public health facility,” said Dr. Teitelbaum, Acting Director of the Jerusalem Mental Health Center, in his remarks. “Research shows that treatment is better when the facility is culturally competent. Our goal is that this new skill will improve our ability to treat the patients.”

Indeed, language-dependent care, such as therapeutic sessions or psychiatric assessment, can be unsuccessful if it is not held in the patient’s mother tongue. Research shows that it is easier to express your troubles in your native language and that psychiatric problems are more evident (and therefore treatable) when they are expressed in the patient’s native language. Thus, when caregivers are not available in the patient’s native tongue, a medical interpreter is a vital part of the treatment process. The mental health interpreter not only knows both languages fluently, he or she is also trained to translate the smallest nuances, even if at first they seem illogical or confused. It is this attention to the smallest details that enables the caregiver to more completely understand the patient’s condition.

Our Hanan Ohana, who directs the Cultural Competency Desk at the JICC, noted, “This graduation ceremony means more than 15 or so trained caregivers in the course. The Jerusalem Mental Health Center is a leader in mental health services in Israel. Their enthusiasm for the training will serve as an example for other mental health institutions in Israel, which we expect will follow suit. The support of the administration was very important in this process. Without it, implementation of the program and assimilation of cultural competency principles would be much more difficult.”

Over the course of two months the participants learned the concepts of cultural competency in general, as well as the basic guidelines of medical interpreting, especially in the context of mental health treatment. “This is the first time I’ve taught a course for mental health professionals in Jerusalem,” said Dr. Michal Schuster, Senior Consultant and Facilitator for Cultural Competency, and also a lecturer at Bar Ilan University. “I definitely learned much more than I taught.”

The participants also received specialized training in interpreting into their native languages. “I thought I knew the language I was translating from, and what I was translating into,” said Solomon, of Ethiopian origin. “But this course opened my eyes to a lot of subtleties I wasn’t aware of.” Lilian, a native Russian-speaker, echoed, “After the course, we feel much differently about the interpretation we do. The course gave us so much. It showed us how much more there is to learn.” Shoshi, also of Ethiopian origin, noted, “I never knew that there were so many different inferences, even in my mother tongue. Now I’m much more careful, even afraid [that I’ll interpret something incorrectly].”

During the course

Dr. Schuster emphasized that it is that awareness, of the gravity of the task of medical interpretation, “that is the key objective of the course. “

We would like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation, whose support made this course possible.

Naomi Roff2014-05-09T14:36:55+00:00April 10th, 2014|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, New Immigrants, Palestinians/Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

MiniActive in East Jerusalem – Updates from the Field

If you follow MiniActive’s Facebook page, and here on our blog, you’ll see that they’ve been extremely busy. But we’ll give you a few summaries here of what they’ve been up to over the past few months.

Numbers

In January 158 complaints were taken care of. In February there were 412 complaints registered and 250 taken care of. In March 2014 alone, were a total of 670 complaints registered to the municipal 106 hotline. Of these, 250 were taken care of.

Before and after road pavement, Wadi Joz

Before and after road repaving, Wadi Joz

Seeing is Fixing

In March and April Palestinian MiniActive volunteers from the southern neighborhoods of Sur Baher and Umm Tuba, respectively, hosted the Municipality’s regional director of planning and infrastructure. Some 40 residents from both neighborhoods spoke about different problems they face, on their respective street, and how they can work to solve them. Issues ranged from re-paving parts of a street, to installing a mirror to increase visibility on narrow, windy roads, to receiving approval to paint (paint themselves) public walls. In Umm Tuba, the tour took place on a road that is to become a ‘model road’, where improvements are going to be made in a number of areas. The women (plus one representative of the men) spoke freely with the regional director, asking how he can help, and he, in return, asking what they can give in return. (For example, they agreed to plant plants, supplied by the Municipality, in public areas.)

There have been and continue to be so many obstacles to improving infrastructure in the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. We continue to be so proud of the MiniActive project in East Jerusalem that has been able to make so many inroads toward improving everyday life. We’d like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation for their continuing support of this program.

Closing off electrical wires

Naomi Roff2014-05-31T17:26:43+00:00April 6th, 2014|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Enriching the Toolbox of the Cultural Competency Coordinator: Passover and Easter Information Sheet

We’ve described here our process of producing information sheets for major Jewish, Christian and Muslim holidays for Cultural Competency Coordinators from around the country. Thus far we’ve produced pages for Muslim Ramadan, Eid el-Fitr and Eid el-Adha, Jewish Ethiopian Sigd, Christian Christmas and New Year, Druze Eid el-Hader and Jewish Tisha B’Av and Asara B’Tevet.

We can now add Jewish Passover to the list:

Passover in Health Organisations 2014

The information had two parts: a sheet that explains the main issues that are relevant for Passover in healthcare organizations, and a Word file with suggested texts for posters in Hebrew, Arabic and English about the practice in Israeli healthcare organizations not to being Non-Passover-Kosher food in to the facility during Passover. In the past, we could see posters that either were not helpful for non-Jewish people, or were written in an insulting way, and were usually only in Hebrew. We hope that our text help to solve this.

Immediately after that, we published another sheet about Lent, Easter and Pentecost (and in Israel we need to know the practices of many Christian Sects in this context, Greek Orthodox, Catholic etc.).

Easter in healthcare organisation March 2014

Naomi Roff2014-05-13T20:23:16+00:00March 25th, 2014|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|

The Results are in: More Success for Palestinian Occupational Therapists

After more than 2 months of arduous waiting, the results of the Occupational Therapy certification exam are finally in – 7 out of 12 Palestinian participants from East Jerusalem passed! This brings the total number of Palestinian occupational therapists who have passed the exam with our help to 16 (9 passed the exam the first year), out of a total of 28 participants. Before we started our program, 1-2 from East Jerusalem were passing every year. Read more background information about this program here.

The next step, of course, is for these graduates to find work in their fields. We know that 6 from last year’s class have already found jobs, and we’ll be helping this latest cohort to find employment as well.

We’d like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation, Leichtag Foundation, Dear Foundation and the Hadassah Foundation, for their continuing support of this program. We’d also like to thank the course’s teachers and course developers, and our own Ezadeen El-Saad, who ensured that the course would succeed.

Naomi Roff2016-04-28T15:40:43+00:00March 18th, 2014|Blog, Employment, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs, Supporting employment in East Jerusalem|

Coming Attractions – Groundbreaking Cultural Competency Training Videos

Coming to a hospital / clinic seminar room near you! Four new training videos, produced by the Jerusalem Intercultural Center and Bar Ilan University.

Since we began the Cultural Competency in Health Care project in 2008, we’ve been aiming to offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary training experience to health care professionals, and recently, we’ve made great strides in providing a broad range of information, training manuals and professional networks for peer learning.

From “For the Children”

This week we added a new layer – four new training videos for our cultural sensitivity training sessions. These are the first such videos to be produced in Israel, addressing specific issues faced by populations here. The videos were produced in full partnership with Bar Ilan University, and its Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies.

From “Our Decision”

The four films are based on actual events. The film “Knows What She Wants” describes a meeting between a patient from the immigrant Ethiopian community, who is requesting an injection of the Depo-Provera contraceptive , and the family doctor who is trying to convince her use alternative methods. The film “Checkup” presents a meeting between a Russian speaking patient who comes with her teenage daughter for a routine visit to manage her diabetes, and a Hebrew speaking nurse. In the film “Our Decision” a Muslim-Arab hospital patient diagnosed with a malignant growth on her thyroid is torn between the opinion of her doctor (also a Muslim-Arab), who thinks that immediate surgery is essential, and that of her husband, who wants her released back home quickly. The film “For the Children” takes place at a charged meeting at the welfare department between a social worker and a Haredi family (from the “Eida Haredit”), regarding the temporary transfer of their children to relatives. All the films have subtitles in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Each film deals with a different cultural group, yet each one addresses all the main core issues in cultural competency.

From “Knows What She Wants”

The videos are used to trigger discussions in our various training and follow-up workshops. Each of them brings up critical points that are essential in striving toward culturally competent care in the health care and welfare systems. And all are helping us make culturally competent care in the health care and welfare systems more of a reality. We’d like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation for their ongoing support of this program since its earliest stages. These videos were also supported by the New Israel Fund.

From “Checkup”

Naomi Roff2014-07-11T09:35:17+00:00March 15th, 2014|Asylum Seekers, Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, New Immigrants, Palestinians/Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Social Entrepreneurship on the Jerusalem Railway Park: Deliberative Democracy at its Best

How do you want to see your neighborhood, your city? And what can you do to get there? Often, in our everyday routines, especially after watching / reading / listening to the news, it is difficult to see how we can have an influence. The JICC’s Deliberative Democracy program seeks to change that.

Over the past few years, with assistance from the UJA-Federation of New York, we’ve been working intensively with a number of community councils to help residents influence and improve – and take responsibility for and ownership of – their neighborhoods, and their city.

As a result of our successful work in individual communities, we were asked to lead a larger process led by three community councils in the southern part of the city – Ginot Ha’ir, Baka’a, and Gonenim. The mission – enabling residents in neighborhoods that include the new Jerusalem Railway Park to fully enjoy and take ownership of this new pearl on the Jerusalem landscape. Here’s the flyer that was posted all over the Internet and social media:

The story of the Railway Park itself is one of social activism (more about it here and here). The park runs along the section of the old Ottoman-era Jaffa-Jerusalem rail line, and includes the neighborhoods of German Colony, Baka’a, the Talpiot Industrial Zone, Katamonim and Beit Safafa, ending at Malcha’s Teddy Stadium and the new train station that is in use today. After being cancelled in 1998 the tracks fell into disrepair, and had become an eyesore and garbage dump. Several years ago a group of environmentally-conscious residents, community activists and architects, successfully lobbied to turn this area into a massive urban park instead. After intense lobbying, this plan was accepted by local and national planning authorities. After several years of construction and support by the Jerusalem Municipality, the entire length of the park is just being completed.

With such deep roots in the community, it is only natural that the next step, injecting community activities and responsibility, along the course of the park, would involve the community as well. On March 5, we held a town meeting for residents from all communities that border the Jerusalem Railway Park. In all there were some 50 people, coming from the northern to the southern tips of the Park. All came to discuss events, initiatives and characteristics that they wish to see in the Park.

We used Open Space Technology for this event, which enables participants to raise and choose the issues they are passionate about, and work to advance them. Residents broke up into a number of groups. They ranged from a music festival, to a Purim parade, to growing edible plants along the Park, to Jewish-Arab relations to security and cleanliness. All groups are now forming plans of action of the different initiatives in order to bring them to fruition. The evening was so successful that we got this thank you from the different Community Councils:

Naomi Roff2016-03-19T11:42:12+00:00March 10th, 2014|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish Religious Denominations, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Larger Baka Community Council, Palestinians/Arabs, Railway Park|

Coming Soon: More Palestinian Physical Therapists in East Jerusalem

We just got the great news – results of the Israeli Ministry of Health’s certification exam in physical therapy – 4 of our Palestinian students passed the exam! This is a phenomenal result, since before we began offering this course it was rare that anyone passed the English exam, including English-speaking immigrants! The results also indicated that the curriculum in this pilot course was soundly based.

These students had studied physical therapy at an institution in the West Bank or Jordan, and needed to pass the exam to be able to work legally in East Jerusalem. We’ve been operating courses for occupational therapists and nurses since 2012, with the assistance of the Jerusalem Foundation and the Hadassah Foundation, but this was the first time we’d offered the course in this discipline.

There were 18 people in the first course. In addition to the 4 that passed, another 5 who almost passed. We are helping these students to study for the next exam, which will take place in April. In preparation, we will hold review sessions at the JICC, some with the instructors and some on their own, with the theoretical material that we’ve purchased.

In addition to helping course participants prepare for the next exam, we are also preparing for our next cohort of physical therapists. We are closely examining the method of study, and will make improvements and adaptations for new participants in 2014.

Naomi Roff2016-04-28T15:40:34+00:00January 25th, 2014|Blog, Employment, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs, Supporting employment in East Jerusalem|

Emergency Services in the Storm of the Century – MiniActive and Emergency Response Networks Join Forces

December 12 – 15, 2013. More than a foot of snow falls on Jerusalem over 2 days. It’s the worst December snow storm in Jerusalem since weather conditions began being recorded more than 100 years ago. Trees were down, electricity and telephone lines were knocked out, roads were blocked – all over Jerusalem. Residents were without electricity and telephone service for days. In a region where one snowstorm is considered unusual (Before the snowstorm in January 2013, the previous last snowstorm to hit Jerusalem was in 2008.), a storm of this magnitude had the potential of being devastating and disastrous, especially for the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, where physical infrastructures lag far behind other areas of Jerusalem and Israel.

We are proud to have 2 programs – MiniActive and Emergency Response Networks – that took leading rolls in helping the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem weather the storm, again. It can even be said that in the chaos that the storm brought, the networks we cultivated (MiniActive and Emergency Response Networks, see below) were the only ones that actually functioned. Not only did they function, they joined together to help residents weather the storm.

MiniActive set up virtual and real ‘situation rooms’ that coordinated the onslaught of reports and problems from the field, via its hundreds of volunteers throughout East Jerusalem. Those in the situation rooms were in constant contact with the appropriate service providers – from the electric, telephone and gas companies, with the Emergency Response Networks to try and clear roads and deliver vital goods to stranded families, to the municipality, reporting fallen trees – to report damages and find solutions to these and other urgent problems. Updates were uploaded to the MiniActive Facebook page.

Special cars used to help residents

The Emergency Response Networks that had been organized in a number of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages in and around Jerusalem were as ready as they could be. The populations of these areas had already been mapped (to know where all the doctors, nurses, social workers, contractors, owners of tractors and 4X4 vehicles were, etc. See here for more information). Practice drills had already taken place. So when the snow began to fall, the Networks knew what to do. They worked throughout East Jerusalem, from Jebel Mukaber and Sur Baher in the south to Silwan, and Sheikh Jarrach to Beit Hanina and Shuafat in the north, and even extended beyond the security fence to Kufr Aqeb. They succeeded in recruiting all the local 4×4 vehicles, tractors and other heavy machinery to clear away snow and provide aid to individuals in need. They cleared snow and alerted others to hazards. They helped go door to door to deliver emergency assistance to those in need.

Besides the immediate emergency relief, both programs cultivated communication between residents, and between residents and service providers. Residents gained confidence in their ability to take care of themselves. The end result – community solidarity toward improving their everyday future, together.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:52:15+00:00December 25th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Emergency Readiness Networks, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs, Silwan Community Dialogue, Tsur Baher Community Dialogue|

MiniActive at the Shared Living in a Mixed City Conference

Excitement was in the air on November 21 at the Shared Living in a Mixed City conference, which was organized by the Jerusalem Foundation, the Adam Institute for Democracy and Peace, and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. At the conferencem, we provided an overview of the amazing achievements and methodology of the Miniactive program in the session entitled, “Providing Service” – Municipal Services in Mixed Cities.” The session shed light on the tensions between ultra-Orthodox and non-ultra-Orthodox Jews in Beit Shemesh, the struggle for equal housing and education rights for Arabs in Jaffa, and on MiniActive project in East Jerusalem.

We started by describing what the project had done. Picture after picture of ‘before’ and ‘after’, a garbage receptacle, a traffic light, a safety barrier, a bus stop, water drainage. Everyday change taking place in almost every neighborhood. She then described the project’s methods of bombarding the 106 municipal hotline with requests and pictures, letters, etc.; of providing tours of different streets for municipal unit heads to see with their own eyes. Of organizing meetings between 106 workers and MiniActive volunteers, so they can learn the work process of the 106 hotline to make their work more effective.

From behind the words and pictures came the message – this is our house, and it’s time that we fight for it to be a pleasant place to live. And the Municipality and other service providers – it is their obligation to give us the services.

The description inspired everyone in the room. “Miniactive has brought about a huge change,” began Dr. Hagit Perez of the Department of Epidemiology, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Chair of the session, and an activist in the south in her own right. “In these cases usually two groups are blamed: one, the victims usually blames themselves. How did they let themselves get into this situation? And the second to be blamed is the service provider, who doesn’t provide sufficient services. Here, Palestinian women have said, ‘Let’s solve our own problems. We can do anything, we have no limits. We, as mothers, want to make sure our children have a better future. We want to make the change not only I our own back yards, but make a change in in our whole community’s awareness.”

One audience member commented, “It’s truly inspiring how Palestinian women presented the program to us, what they’ve done and their accomplishments. She is such a change maker.”

A question from the audience was, “If this methodology was so successful, what about MiniActive in other groups, such as the Haredi public?” Well, we’re working on that, too…

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:49:52+00:00November 22nd, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

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