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Volunteer
Experience |
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 Portrait of Sara, Kiryat
Malachi Youth Council Volunteer
By Dina Tanners, JoAnn
Kocen
JoAnn
Kocen, Palm Springs: "Sara sat across from me...her look was clear
and confident and just a little bit curious as she sized up this
adult American who was supposed to help her with her
English."
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 California, Arizona
Volunteers Assist at Youth Club
By Dina Tanners, Elyse
Maltz
Elyse
Maltz, East Bay Federation: "I must tell you how beautiful and
wonderful these children are and how much need is here for our
Jewish communities in our consortium. I am so glad that I am
spending my summer here."
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Seattle Teacher Makes a
Difference Volunteering in Kiryat Malachi
Area
By
Marilyn Meyer
Marilyn
Meyer, a school teacher in Seattle, volunteered for two weeks:
"This morning I was dropped off with curriculum, a stack of
photographs, a copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" (in Hebrew)...and
tikvah that the visit would be a
success." |
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 Bellevue Volunteer
Donates Over 22,000 English Books to the
Region
Norm
Chapman, of Bellevue, Washington, has sent over 22,000
English books, videos, and toys to schools in the Region. He hopes
to send 25,000 by this spring and wind down his project. Dina
Tanners helped sort and catalog the
books.
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 Seattle Couple Teaches
Chess at Kiryat Malachi Community
Center
The
chess games just began a few months ago when the Etzion center
opened. If anyone volunteering likes to work with teens and play
chess, it is a great place to go. The kids are enthusiastic and love
the attention and learn quickly.
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 Tutoring in Kiryat
Malachi
Dina
and Howard Tanners tutored English in three different settings
during summer. It was incredibly helpful for the students to have an
opportunity to hear and speak English and to improve their language
skills.
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 Last Day at Hetz Kadima
for California Volunteer
By Elyse Maltz
Elyse
Maltz: "Today was my last day of work here and I had a great day
with the kids. If I touched one life, I did well. But I really think
I touch them all. Thank you Partnership 2000 for giving me this
opportunity."
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Building Youth
Partnership Connections |
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 Long Beach Youth Makes a
Tremendous Impact - 100's in Kiryat Malachi
Benefit
Thirteen
year old Avi Press from Long Beach took a big idea for his
Bar Mitzvah tzedakkah project, and made it come true. As a result,
hundreds of youth in Kiryat Malachi have
benefited.
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 Summer Counselors from
Israel in the Western Region of the
U.S.
This
summer, 14 youth from the Kiryat Malachi-Hof Ashkelon area came to
four communities in the Western P2K region and worked at summer
camps there - in Seattle,
Orange County, Palm
Springs, and Phoenix.
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 Camp Shalom: Unique
Partnership Environmental Youth
Exchange
By Carolyn Armacher, Amy
Wasser-Simpson
After
more than a year of organizing, some 30 teens and youth leaders from
Israel and the West Coast converged in Malibu, California, August
4-7 for four days of environmental
education.
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 West Coast Communities
Sponsor "Youth City"
By Dvora Attal, Gil
Ramot
A
generous donation from the West Coast communities made it possible
for the three-day "Youth City" summer celebration to be
held in the city center of Kiryat Malachi from August 21 to
24.
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Building
Partnership Connections |
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 B'nai Mitzvah in Kiryat
Malachi
Yitzhak
is a man with a big heart who works in the Department of Social
Services in Kiryat Malachi, and together with another staff member,
plans B'nai Mitzvah for youth whose families cannot afford to do
so.
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Shorts from
Israel
News briefs from the Region: Death
from a Kassam Rocket, Mammograms in Israel, Garden Corner in the
Senior
Center,
Increase in Students in Schools in Hof Ashkelon, Tina Turner Sighted
in Kiryat Malachi...and
more. |
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6 November 2005 - 4 Cheshvan
5766
Hello Friends and
Partners,
This
newsletter was supposed to go out before the High Holidays, but due
to circumstances beyond our control, it is coming out afterwards.
Most of the articles are about activities and events from this past
spring and summer. We hope you enjoy reading them.
We want to
wish you the best for a healthy, prosperous and peaceful 5766 and
hope you had a good holiday season with friends and
family.
As I put together this newsletter, I realize that I
have been back in the U.S. for almost two
months. My husband Howard and I were in Israel from June 24 to
July 22, 19 days of which were spent volunteering in the Kiryat
Malachi-Hof Ashkelon region. This is the third summer that we have
volunteered in our region, and each year the area grows on us
more.
Our time overlapped with several volunteers from
Arizona, one from California and another from Seattle. Some
had not been to Israel in over 20 years.
One spent many hours learning some very basic conversational Hebrew
before coming, some speak almost no Hebrew, and I'm fairly fluent in
street Hebrew. We volunteered in different arenas - in a summer
program at a center for upper elementary school youth at risk, at
Meir Panim (a center that provides meals for low income
individuals), at the summer school at a local high school, at the
new Herzl neighborhood center teaching chess, in our apartment as we
helped youth coming to the US as camp counselors improve their
speaking skills and learn more about their future experience in the
U.S., and at local schools and libraries, categorizing and shelving
easy English books collected and sent by Norm Chapman in the Seattle
area.
We learned about the impending pull-out from Gaza, saw
weekly progress on the "caravillot" (deluxe [for Israel] trailers)
at Nitzanim, traveled to Sderot and Netiv Haasara and grieved, too,
with the death of a young woman from a kassam attack at Netiv
Haasara, and sympathized with the principal of the religious
elementary school at Brechia (the only one in Hof Ashkelon) as they
prepared for the new year, not knowing if they would have 100 new
students or 500 new students on top of their normal 320. (It turned
out that they have 124.) We also met so many people who touched our
hearts - a boy at the youth-at risk-center who the volunteer wished
she could take home; another who, at first, showed off how many
swear words he knew in English, but later, wrote the nicest good-bye
note; a high-school dropout who was pushing to catch up on his
English skills and was so excited when we helped him set up an
e-mail account.
People in the region and in much of
Israel seem so
much more genuine than back in the U.S.
People are closer to each other. They know their neighbors, their
children's friends' parents, start talking to you in the grocery
line or on the bus, and invite you to their homes as you talk. One
of the volunteers ended up traveling to Sinai with someone she met
in such a way.
There is a phrase in Hebrew, "an open table",
and Israelis always have cookies or cake and are ready to serve them
with coffee or tea (and were polite enough to give me water when I
turned down the hot drinks when it was over 90 degrees outside). The
Kiryat Malachi area is depressed economically but the warmth we felt
from the people was the overriding constant. That caring in everyday
life, even by strangers or slight acquaintances, is something we
sorely missed after returning to the States.
If you have not
had the opportunity to spend two to three weeks, volunteering in the
Hof Ashkelon-Kiryat Malachi region, I urge you to consider it. Be
sure to spend at least one Shabbat there, too, for another side of
Israel few tourists
experience. And now, I hope you enjoy hearing about the goings on in
our P2K region in Israel by reading this
newsletter!
Dina
Tanners, Editor |
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Submissions |
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Article
submissions for the next e-newsletter will be due by December 1,
2005. The
next newsletter will be sent out before the end of 2005. It will be
the last newsletter of the Partnership 2000 Western Region as it is
now comprised. Submissions should be sent to Dina Tanners at tanners47@yahoo.com.
All
submissions must be in Word format with photos attached as .jpg or
.tif files. Please let us know who the writer of each article is as
well and the city they represent. Thank
you. |
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Contact |
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Sue
Schoenfeld, Content Management Coordinator, Jewish Agency - Israel
Department,
sues@jazo.org.il |
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Copyright ©2005.
Jewish Agency for Israel. All Rights
Reserved. |
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