Living Safer Living Longer | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Living Safer Living Longer in Amharic for Seniors of Ethiopian Origin

We’ve described here our work to help senior citizens keep a safe house, especially during the coronavirus crisis. While before we concentrated on Jerusalem, this new situation has also enabled us to help seniors all over Israel. One example is the group of Ethiopian senior citizens, being helped by a university student of Ethiopian descent.

Living Safer, Living Longer via the telephone

University student volunteers were recruited during the lockdown of March – April, to make contact with seniors by telephone, first to make sure they were OK, and then to see if they’d like to make sure their homes were safe. The student volunteers were and continue to be a critically important part of the project, since they are in continual direct contact with the seniors over the phone.

One of the student volunteers is of Ethiopian origin, part of a Young Olim Leadership group that underwent training in guiding senior citizens over the phone in making their house safer.

After the training he decided to establish an Amharic-language group for senior citizens of Ethiopian origin, from Or Yehuda and Lod. There are 22 seniors in his group. Although the training and all the explanatory materials are only in Hebrew, he speaks with them in Amharic and goes through each room of the house, making sure each is safe. Each time he covers a different room.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:48:15+00:00August 20th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Living Safer, Living Longer, in the Shadow of COVID-19

The Living Safer, Living Longer initiative was designed to provide lectures and in-person mentoring to help seniors and young families assess home safety and preventive health measures that can improve their quality of life.

For illustration

With the onset of the coronavirus crisis, Living Safer, Living Longer shifted its focus to mainly the elderly, a population at risk during this time.

It has joined with welfare department initiatives that phone seniors to check up on their welfare. Phone-based mentoring has replaced in-person individual guidance (for the time-being, at least), with an emphasis on home safety. This was especially important leading up to the Passover holiday, when many people do extra cleaning, retrieve dishes and other materials from hard-to-reach places, and more. And because of shelter-in-place directives, the fear was that seniors would attempt to do tasks regularly reserved for younger friends and family members, resulting in at-home accidents. Fortunately, this situation did not transpire.

Bolstered by university student volunteers, the initiative first called all seniors on welfare lists provided by the Jerusalem Municipality in the Gilo, Lev Ha’Ir and German Colony area, as well as in Kiryat Hayovel. In follow-up calls, volunteers went through a protocol of home safety checklists, to ensure that the seniors would be safe at home during this time of social distancing. Since April, the Living Safer, Living Longer project has spoken with over 520 seniors by phone. Many of them have asked for second consultations as well.

In addition, we have been getting the word out via Zoom. Aliza, the project director, has been giving Zoom lectures on making the house safe for seniors in cooperation with the Municipality’s GimlaZoom initiative for seniors, which offers a range of enrichment activities and lectures for seniors, online. After the first lecture on July 26, 12 people requested additional individual guidance via telephone. On August 12, she concentrated on ‘Making the house safe for the grandchildren,’ also of special importance for the seniors.

Screen shot of the GimlaZoom web site for seniors

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of the Living Safer, Living Longer initiative.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:37:59+00:00August 15th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Living Safer Living Longer for Young Families through Zoom

As the world moved to Zoom, as did Living Safer, Living Longer.

Since June, we’ve held two workshops on Zoom for young families. There were about 10 families at each meeting. After each one, about 60% (6 of them) call the receive further guidance in making their homes safe.

Young Families Workshop.

Here’s one example: After an online lecture, a young father called Living Safer, Living Longer Director Aliza Shabo-Hayut with a question – he and his wife were going away for the weekend and he’d like for his mother – who would be watching their young son – to receive direction in maintaining a safe household. So we called her, and provided the necessary guidance. The weekend went by fine, and all were well.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support of Living Safer, Living Longer.

Naomi Roff2020-08-09T15:34:26+00:00July 30th, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

JICC Cross-Pollination – Living Safer, Living Longer and Cultural Competence Training at Sha’re Zedek

We continue to hold Cultural Competence meetings for workers at Sha’are Zedek Medical Center. You can read more about our work with Sha’are Zedek here, here and here.

The hospital continues to provide professional enrichment to those who went through our medical interpretation course. These employees speak a range of languages, including Arabic, Russian, Amharic and French. This time, the enrichment covered preventive health and home safety. Our Aliza Shabo-Hayut, Director of our Living Safer, Living Longer project, gave the lecture.

Learning about preventive health and home safety measures

Living Safer, Living Longer seeks to reduce one of the largest problems in preventive health and home safety – procrastination. We know it’s important to perform periodic examinations and tests for the early detection of different illnesses – periodic examinations by the family doctor, mammograms for women, tests for colon cancer, and more. But the daily hustle and bustle of work and family often get in the way, as do personal and cultural fears. This leads to missing opportunities for detecting serious illnesses early. As part of the presentation, Aliza and the participants shared personal stories of early detection, which saved lives – routine skin examination, detecting of a lump in the breast and more. We hope that the employees will use this information to promote their own health and that of their family members, and serve as ambassadors for preventive health and home safety.

Learning terms, learning about tests

Afterward, we held a practice exercise related to interpretation. The participants learned about the advantages of working on online documents (such as Google Docs), where a number of people can upload and update terms for translation at the same time, to the same document. The translation instructors will review the terms translated on the document so that an accurate, up-to-date and professional file of health-related terms – for children as well as adults – can be created.

We were also happy to see that the hospital felt that the interpreters’ visibility was important as well – new tags have been made for them to use when translating! This is how we advance professional medical interpreting, showing that medical interpreting is indeed an added skill, and not everyone can translate. Well done to the hospital management.

New tags in languages they need

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support for Cultural Competence in Jerusalem for more than 10 years.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:39:28+00:00March 11th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Living Safer Living Longer|

Living Safer, Living Longer in East Jerusalem Continues to Grow

We’re happy to tell you about two new groups of the Living Safer, Living Longer program in East Jerusalem. One is in partnership with the MiniActive network of Palestinian women (read more about them here), and the other is at the Abna al-Quds Community Center.

Living Safer, Living Longer’s partnership with MiniActive has been so successful that we began a second group this year. The group has 18 participants.

Thus far, all have undergone training in ensuring home safety for families with young children as well as for the elderly. In addition, each was accompanied by the project’s Arabic-speaking staff member in their first home visit. They then continued to make ‘house calls’ on their own.

In order to receive the graduation certificate and volunteer card, each volunteer is required to make at least one house call to one of the group’s members, and two visits each to the homes of local elderly and families with young children.

Graduation certificate and volunteer card

They will continue to make new home visits and return to review the improvements to homes they have already visited. We can’t wait for an upcoming visit from a firefighter from the Wadi Joz firefighting station on March 31. He will give a lecture about preventing and putting out household fires.

Another group that is now undergoing training is taking place at the Abna al-Quds Community Center in the Old City of Jerusalem. There, a group of 26 women has completed the theoretical training and is beginning to make house calls, accompanied by Hirya, the project’s Arabic-speaking staff person.

Sometimes these visits are hard – people often don’t want to invite others into their private space to have them see all they’ve been doing wrong. However, if approached properly, these visits are basically about engaging the public on a personal level to think about home safety. And sometimes, the mentees have suggestions for us, too. One woman who Hirya visited with another volunteer in the Old City suggested, “Don’t wash your floors with too much water, or you could slip!” and “Remove all your rugs from the house!” Definitely worthwhile suggestions.

Thanks to these groups we are refining our work with the volunteers and the most effective methods of engaging the public to improve safety in their homes.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of Living Safer, Living Longer.

Naomi Roff2020-02-28T17:22:54+00:00February 22nd, 2020|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer, MiniActive|

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|

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|

Living Safer, Living Longer – Expanding Our Ranks

We’ve described here and here our Living Safer, Living Longer program, which helps young families and older adults be safer and healthier. Last year we developed four Volunteer Lead Teams – two in the Haredi sector, one in the ‘general’ Jewish sector (religious and secular) and one in the Arab sector.

Dr. Jonathan Scholdenfray speaking about home accidents

Last week, on Wednesday, November 29, we expanded our ranks, opening up a second Non-Haredi-Jewish Volunteer Lead Team, which will help to improve health and home safety among Jerusalem residents. These volunteers are mostly from Gilo and Arnona. They are secular and religious, men and women, and a range of ages and professions, from a nurse to a lawyer to a former school principal to a real estate agent to social workers and more. Interestingly, there are 3 married couples in this group. We originally spoke to the wives (independently of one another) about joining the Volunteer Lead Team, and in all 3 cases, the women thought that it was very important that their husbands join as well.

The first step in developing the Volunteer Lead Team is the training, and Wednesday was the first meeting. Opening the meeting was Dr. Yonatan Schuldenfrei, from the Pediatrics Department at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, who spoke about household accidents that bring children to the emergency room. What an interesting – and important – subject.

Wishing many hours of learning and meaningful work for the new team!

Naomi Roff2018-12-08T17:50:30+00:00December 6th, 2018|Blog, Living Safer Living Longer|

Living Safer, Living Longer in the Palestinian Community

This past month, our Living Safer, Living Longer program, which empowers residents to take control of preventive health and safety in their homes, became fully operational in all sectors of Jerusalem society. We discussed here about the development of the project, and here about the Haredi and general Jewish sectors. Now, the project has begun in earnest in the Palestinian sector as well.

Living Safer Living Longer in Beit Hanina

Here are some pictures of the program in action, where program participants are presenting the principles of the program to seniors clubs throughout East Jerusalem.

In Sur Baher

So what did our MiniActive volunteers think of the Living Safer Living Longer course itself? Here are some of the things they said:

“I learned a lot of things I didn’t know before.”

“I saw I needed to do a lot of things in my own home [and now it’s much safer].”

“The program’s gotten under my skin, and I talk about it everywhere I go.”

“I try and convince a lot of people I meet to make their homes safer, and I even go with them to buy safety aides and help them install them in their homes.”

“The meeting with the firefighter saved me from a large fire in my own home. A fire broke out while I was frying food and I knew what to do and acted in a cool headed manner.”

At the end of the course each volunteer received a demonstration kit with the program’s logo, and a training certificate (with a picture!). Each kit included a number of safety aides, such as: a smoke detector, safety plugs for electrical outlets, safety closures for cabinets (to prevent access to dangerous materials), a door stopper (to prevent doors from slamming on hands and feet), as well as checklists for preventive health tests and home safety.

Here are some more pictures from a home safety lecture:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their support of the MiniActive program, and an anonymous donor for its support of Living Safer, Living Longer.

Naomi Roff2018-08-24T09:34:13+00:00July 15th, 2018|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Living Safer Living Longer, Palestinians/Arabs|