Jews and Arabs volunteer

GAIL LICHTMAN ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE

Six years ago, if someone had told Shoshana Bhodana, a shy mother of two from Tel-Aviv's disadvantaged Florentine neighborhood, that she would one day be a community activist who would successfully take on city hall, she would have laughed out loud. Yet this is exactly what Bhodana has become thanks to a Jewish-Arab organization called Mahapach-Taghir.

Mahapach-Taghir, whose name means a 180-degree turnaround in both Hebrew and Arabic, was founded in 1997 as a nonprofit organization for social change. Working for a just Israeli society with equal socioeconomic and educational opportunities for all sectors, Mahapach-Taghir has developed a Jewish-Arab youth leadership model working with disempowered populations to minimize educational and social gaps, develop local leadership and encourage social awareness, involvement and personal responsibility.

This is being achieved by working with local residents, particularly with children, youth and women, in seven communities throughout Israel, among them the Arab towns of Tamra and Yaffia. Here, Arab and Jewish students are involved in the communal work, run programs and often even live in the communities themselves.

"The Abraham Fund supports the vision and the activities of the dynamic Mahapach-Taghir," said Lee Perlman, director of programming and initiatives at the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit organization that promotes co-existence and equality between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel. "Jewish and Arab student activists work together through community development to achieve shared common goals. The fact that the organization is run by one Jewish and one Arab co-director reflects a true commitment to Jewish-Arab partnership."

"The heart of each and every Mahapach-Taghir community is the Learning Community," explained Mahapach's acting co-director Liron Azulai. "This program provides children and youth with free pedagogical tutoring and social activities. In return and as part of our goal to advance social involvement and personal responsibility, we require the communal involvement of the children and their parents." About 600 children and their families and some 200 students are currently involved in Mahapach-Taghir activities.

The program also runs a reading project for teaching literacy skills to children and adults, a community gardens project, groups for youth and women, projects to develop economic independence, community action days and steering and action committees involving local residents. Two student seminars are organized each year, where Jewish and Arab students acquire tools that support their pedagogical work and encourage their community involvement.

"These national seminars are very important," said Amani Diab, a student at the University of Haifa and a Mahapach-Taghir co-ordinator in Tamra, an Arab town in western Galilee. "Throughout the year, we each work in our own individual communities. At the seminars, we learn a lot from one another. Students from other communities, for example, have encountered some of the same problems I am facing in Tamra. I see how they deal with these situations and this helps me to relate to them in new and different ways."

But it is the people in the community and the change the program has brought about in their thinking and actions that sets the organization apart. No one illustrates this change better than Bhodana.

Bhodana remembers the day a Mahapach-Taghir student co-ordinator came to her home and asked if she would like to send her eight-year-old daughter to a program of free, after-school tutoring and social activities.

"I was a little suspicious," Bhodana recalled. "I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as a free lunch. I asked what I had to do in return. The co-ordinator said I had to volunteer in the community for two hours a month. I had no idea what volunteering was so I said I'd bring cookies!"

After a few weeks, Bhodana noticed a positive change in her daughter - she seemed happier and more socially involved with other children. She was also doing better in school. Bhodana decided to go to the Mahapach-Taghir centre to see what was going on.

"I only meant to stay a few minutes but I ended up staying the entire afternoon," she said. "I found myself teaching the Jewish and Arab children drawing techniques and I went back the next week too."

After a while the co-ordinator asked Bhodana if she would like to attend a group he was setting up of neighborhood women. "He told me that other mothers had complaints about the schools, the health funds, the municipality and that I should meet some of them over coffee," she noted. "At first I felt awkward. I had lived in the neighborhood for some 20 years but had kept pretty much to myself. I didn't even know most of the neighbors in my building."

Nevertheless, Bhodana went and found herself intrigued. She wanted to go back the next week but her husband objected. "In the end, I decided not to go but I felt miserable. The next week, I decided to go no matter what. My husband was in shock. It was the first time I had ever stood up for myself."

Bhodana found herself looking forward to these meetings all week long. When the Jewish and Arab co-ordinators said that the group would be forming a steering committee, she gladly joined.

"I learned that we would be struggling for community rights," she related. "We started talking to people in the neighborhood about what they thought were the most urgent problems. We gave out questionnaires from which we learned that two of the issues demanding immediate attention were the need to replace sand in sandboxes in a municipal kindergarten and to prevent the closure of the neighborhood's baby clinic, where parents of newborns receive medical consultation and guidance."

Working with the Mahapach-Taghir co-ordinator, the residents found out which officials to contact at city hall, how to conduct an information campaign in the neighborhood and finally how to pressure the municipality. In the end, they succeeded in acquiring a budget from the municipality and promoting grassroots co-operation among residents.

After a year and a half, Bhodana joined Mahapach-Taghir's national board and then became its chair. "Mahapach-Taghir changed my life. I was someone who felt she was nothing. Today, I know that I am worth something and my opinions count. I am not afraid of the authorities. I have learned how to cope with community problems. The organization taught me to stand up for my rights and for the rights of the Jews and Arabs in our community. Today, I can see beyond my own doorstep and I understand that others have the same problems that I have. I know that when we unite, we can work to solve these problems."

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