Today we toured the Melah School based dropout intervention program for junior high students, which seeks to fully reintegrate youth at risk into the normalive classroom setting.
The teachers are amazing! The bearded teacher in this video is named Ori and I ate dinner with him and his wife in the Shaharut Youth Leadership community. He is an amazing teacher who not only has great knowledge in his subject area of History, he also has great knowledge about how his students learn.
Ori teaches his students how to critically think!
This is key to education!The program recognizes the need for teachers to create a close safe relationship with their students, especially those students who are not interested in school at all. The drop out rate for high schools students is very high for some of the lower class which is typically made up of recent Ethiopian immigrant families.
Ori and the administrators made it clear to us, “these kids are not stupid!”
He explained that the students are merely stressed, disinterested, or subjected to social issues that cause them to break away from schooling. He went on to explain how it’s crucial for the teachers along with the counselors to reconnect these students using a one-on-one Melah way.
Many of the students receive extended personal hours weekly of private teaching, mentoring and education in the Melah program. I also met some of the students helped by the program, it was amazing to see the turn around with some of these students!
We need this kind of education model in the United States.
This food pantry assists more than 100 families in the Yokneam-Megiddo cities. About 600 people are totally assisted by the work of this food pantry program. Thanks to St. Louis Jewish Federation and their Table to Table program.
The man featured in this video is the volunteer who helps organize the day-to-day operations at the pantry. He is an amazing retired Navy man who has served Israel for many years. He was injured in several wars and told us because he felt blessed to live through such terrible circumstances that he wanted to spend the rest of his life returning life to others. He volunteers and works tirelessly making sure families are fed.
After helping to create some 60 food bags for the clients (we made the longest assembly line), we also presented him with some donations from our group and other St. Louis families. He was so overwhelmed with joy that he was brought to tears by our physical presence. Seeing this many of us were also brought to tears seeing how much this man works to keep those less fortunate from going hungry.
This is again our lesson today – making those relationships which build the community. You cannot do this in a vacuum. The work this pantry does is solid. The volunteer featured in this video literally goes out into the community to get companies to help his cause. This is about sustaining a community though building relationships.
Desta (Joy) welcomes us into her dance studio for Ethiopian girls in Yokneam-Meggido.
These young teenage girls are learning valuable life lessons by reconnecting to their Ethiopian culture and art of dance. Their leader Desta is an amazing young Ethiopian Jewish adult who herself fled from war torn Africa many years ago to find herself safe in Israel. Desta explained she did nothing to remain Ethiopian; rather she did everything to become Israeli. She did everything she could to erase her old culture while she did everything to cling to a new one. It was not until her college years where she rediscovered her Ethiopian culture specifically using dance.
Now she is giving back by teaching the young Ethiopian Jews about their culture. Many of these girls come from families who need help from social services. The pressure of society doesn’t allow these young girls to be either Ethiopian or Israeli, they are caught in a identity crisis.
Again through building deep relationships with the young girls, Desta is able to influence their lives. Many become so interested in the dance that now they want to pursue it at the University. They are making connections to other Ethiopians girls and this is giving them empowerment skills.
Relationships build strong communities that directly build a stronger Israel.
The girls are amazing.
