The Israel Nature and Parks Authority seeks to protect Israel’s treasures of nature, landscape, and heritage, and strives to connect people to these places.
But how do you do this effectively, with Israel’s vast diversity of populations, communities, languages and cultures?
Community and volunteer coordinators – Israel Nature and Parks authority
This was the subject of our Orna Shani Golan’s discussion with professionals from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority on January 20. More than 20 community and volunteer coordinators convened in the Afek National Park training class for the first time for a cultural competency seminar.
The coordinators meet people from a wide range of communities on a daily basis, and try, in varied ways, to connect them to values of nature and its preservation. These intercultural meetings often raise dilemmas that the coordinators discussed in the meeting. Examples included issues of language – when there are classes of Jewish students and classes of Arab students – what language will the meeting be conducted in? How do you hold a joint march when a religious school refuses to walk in mixed groups of boys and girls and demands that the secular school to march with boys and girls separately? And what to do with an employee who doesn’t discuss these disagreements about different adaptations with his or her supervisor?
These and other dilemmas dealing with the relationship of the Nature and Parks Authority, which is responsible for nature conservation, nature preserves and national parks, and advancing values of nature preservation in Israel, to the community and to all communities are Israel, must be handled in a culturally competent manner in order for the Authority’s efforts to be effective. This is especially important for communities that live close to nature reserves and whose traditional way of life – hunting, fishing, collecting wild plants, and more – might harm the flora and fauna of the reserves. At the meeting, the coordinators and supervisors spoke with Orna, Director of our Cultural Competency Desk, about the insights that arise from a meeting that uses culturally competent tools, and different tools that can be applied to their work. Some examples of tools included:
- How to work correctly with cultural generalities (without sinking into stereotypes);
- Understanding cultural values, and using cultural axes to improve inter-cultural communication;
- The 7-stage model of deepening dialogue based on the explanatory model of Prof. Arthur Kleinman.
In addition, participants learned about culturally competent tools for community work that were developed by our director, Dr. Hagai Agmon-Snir and Dr. Orna Shemer, of The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
We seek to hold additional meetings with the staff of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, according to region, which will help staff respond effectively and in a culturally competent manner to issues and dilemmas that arise from their everyday work.
