2003-08-08 Tel Aviv University-Jaffa
 |
 Israeli
Cities
|
|
| Education
initiative assists poor Arabs and Jews
A university builds trust in Jaffa
|
|
2003-08-08 Tel Aviv University-Jaffa |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
|
| By
Donald H. Harrison JAFFA, Israel—It's clear that Emily Jilveh and Zahava Parizat, respectively an Arab student and a Jewish student from Tel Aviv University, have much in common as they sit side-by-side at the Arab-Jewish Community Center here in Jaffa. Both are residents of Jaffa, both once wondered if they ever would have the financial means to go to university, and both now are helping to enlarge the circle of caring by tutoring and mentoring children in the Jaffa elementary schools. Although they are acquainted with each other, the Arab and Jewish students have not had the occasion to form a friendship. Parizat, 24, is studying sociology and anthropology at the university and tutoring at a Jewish elementary school, whereas Jilveh, 20, is taking education courses and serves as a mentor at an Arab elementary school. "I have met a lot of people, but it hasn't gotten to the point where we go to each other's homes," said Jilveh. "We don¹t have a lot of time," explained Parizat. "We are studying, we are working." However, both young women said they know of other Arab and Jewish students who are becoming friendly, celebrating birthdays together and attending each other's engagement parties. Jilveh and Parizat both are beneficiaries of the Price-Brodie Initiative, a cooperative program funded jointly by two California charitable foundations: the Price Foundation and the Brodie Foundation. Now completing its third of six years, the Price-Brodie Initiative is a collaboration among Tel Aviv University, the city of Tel Aviv and philanthropists Sol and Robert Price of San Diego, who are principals in both foundations. Assets from the estate of Sol Price's friends, Dr. Earl and Marion Brodie, were folded into the funds overseen by Price Charities. Although Jaffa is known to many Tel Aviv residents as an exciting area with trendy restaurants, nightclubs and art galleries, just doors away from some of these glamorous places, low income families struggle to make ends meet. "It was difficult for me to go to university to start my studies, quite difficult," said Parizat. Were it not for the intervention of the Price-Brodie Initiative, she said, "maybe I just would have gone to work or something and not studied. "They have been very helpful, not only on the financial side, but also because I have mentors and if I have a problem or if I feel under pressure I can talk to them, and to the staff as well, which helps me a lot. Maybe without them, I would have quit." Jilveh said she first came into contact with the Price-Brodie Initiative when she heard that there was an organization that helped students take preparatory courses for university, courses that otherwise "would have cost a lot." She said she had her heart set on going to university to learn, but "I thought that there was no chance that I would do it" because educational costs are so expensive. "For me, it is like a dream that they help me so much and support me, not only from the financial point of view, but also emotionally and psychologically. I am very grateful." The staff members of the Price-Brodie Initiative have an open-door policy at Tel Aviv University. Students are always welcome to drop by "for coffee" and to discuss their studies and their problems. As scholarship recipients, the university students are required to "give back" by becoming mentors to elementary school students in Jaffa. "I work with the children from the Achva School, 10-year-old children, either at their houses or mine, and if I meet with a problem, I give them support," Jilveh said. "I love to read to them, and they talk to me. Their parents don't have the time to spend with them. ... I think because I am a younger person, it is not difficult for me to communicate with them. I am like their sister. I don't have sisters, so I enjoy this." Parizat, meanwhile, helps pupils at the Weizmann Elementary School in Jaffa. "I ask them about their difficulties and then I will work with them, on their homework or whatever they do. There are children who don't know how to read well or write, or they can't do the mathematics work. I enjoy working with them very much." * * * Having Tel Aviv University students from the neighborhood volunteer in local elementary schools is one small part of a comprehensive program under the Price-Brodie Initiative. The Initiative has such goals as improving the educational experience for pupils in Jaffa, helping to build community organizations and fostering better relations among Arabs and Jews. Some 40 Initiative-funded programs have addressed these goals at various stages of the project. Ron Natan, principal of the Givat Tamarin Elementary School in the Jewish neighborhood known as Jaffa-Dalet, said he feels fortunate to have students like Parizat and Jilveh coming to schools to serve as mentors. "Many of the parents are working from 8 in the morning until 8 in the evening, or they are unemployed," he said. "Either situation affects the students, the little children. They don't get anything at home. "For example, I made a visit recently to the home of one student and there was nothing in the room except a bed and a table. There were no books, no TV or video, no toys or anything." Sometimes children's inability to cope with family tensions can lead to violence and, later, to drug use, Natan said. As part of the initiative, Tel Aviv University has an innovative "I Am Learning to Cope² program for kindergartners. It includes a visit to Tel Aviv University's zoological park, where the tykes learn that porcupines have quills to protect themselves, honey badgers have unique ways of locating food, wolves travel in packs, and that animals, in general, have ways to cope with their environment. The children are encouraged to pick their own animal to learn about, and to act out the part of an animal. After portraying problem-solving by animals, the children are encouraged to talk about how they can solve problems facing them. In another activity, they attend a performance of a drama about a child their own age moving to a new house. The play was written and staged for this program. After three years of the Price-Brodie Initiative, principal Natan said he sees a marked improvement among pupils in his elementary school's lower grades. Before the program started, he said, "most of the pupils had a gap of perhaps two years from those in the other, richer, schools. These days they are almost at the same level. The children achieved first-grade reading levels while they were in the first grade." Diti Shvili, director of the Price-Brodie Initiative, told Heritage that Israel is too financially strapped to provide schools with the kinds of educational enrichments that we in the United States perhaps take for granted. So, Shvili said, Israeli "parents pay ... they call it the 'gray education.' You pay and you bring all those additional things into the school." But in Jaffa, "if somebody, or the municipality, does not bring all those things into the school, it will not be there." In partial response, Tel Aviv University has designed special enrichment programs for children in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. Thirteen times over a term, depending on the grade level, the children learn about botany, medicine or the law. On most of these occasions, university faculty or students drive 15 minutes to Jaffa to make a presentation in the classrooms. But a few times a year, the children are taken by bus from Jaffa to the university for laboratory work and for what Price-Brodie Initiative director Diti Shvili calls "a chance to dream." "For some of the children, going to the university is like going to the moon," Shvili said. "It is very far for them." While learning at the university about such medical topics as how smoking adversely affects the body, the students also come to realize that a higher education is not some far-off dream, unattainable for them. They begin to think in terms of some day attending the university themselves, Shvili said. Natan said he has seen the results at his elementary school. "They can see that the university is not a place on a high mountain; it is something that they can achieve," he said. "You see the children start to develop a curiosity toward some of the subjects, some of the areas. They talk about it, about what they will do in the future." It's too early to tell what the long-range effect of these programs will be — the Price-Brodie Initiative is only in the middle of its six-year term, and many life experiences lie ahead of the pupils before they are old enough to attend the university. Nevertheless, said Natan, "when you see the little children working, concentrating, with no discipline problems, no violence, and when you see them smiling, I think this is enough for me. I visit a class and my pupils are sitting and listening and there is quiet in the class, this is enough for me." Dayenu. * * * Claris Harbon, a professor at Tel Aviv University¹s law school, runs a high-impact Price-Brodie Initiative program: a legal clinic for the residents of Jaffa staffed by students who receive law school credit for their practical work. Last year, under Harbon's direction, the law students handled 200 cases that "varied from A to Z," Harbon said. Many, if not most of them, had to do with "executions," she said. When she saw people around the table grimace, Harbon laughed and said "that's the word we use," explaining that she was referring to the "execution" of court judgments and warrants, and not the "execution" of criminals — which, in any case, rarely occurs in Israel, where capital punishment ordinarily is banned. (An exception was made in the case of captured Holocaust engineer Adolf Eichmann.) In the first year, Harbon said, Arab residents were a bit wary of the program, but by the second year they accounted for half the case load. This year, Harbon said, 117 of the 200 clients are Arab residents. "Most of the students who come to work in Jaffa are human-rights oriented, so they don't have any problems about Jews and Arabs," Harbon said. "But they see both Jewish and Arab poverty for the first time, and they see it in new and different ways. It is quite fascinating." She recalled one student who initially expressed consternation about a client who was in debt and yet at the same time had covered herself in gold jewelry. "Why doesn¹t she sell the jewelry?" the student demanded. "The student is changing and evolving," Harbon said. "Now he can see that woman without judging her. He can see that perhaps she got her jewelry from her grandmother, and it was her only inheritance. So students see the reality differently." Some of the cases tackled by the clinic are very difficult, Harbon said. "There was a case last month in which a person owed one million shekels to the city of Tel Aviv— a debt that was like a mortgage for him and his kids forever." The debt was for taxes and water, and, in looking into the issue, the law students learned that property in Jaffa located near the Mediterranean Sea is treated as if it were as valuable as beachfront property by Tel Aviv's lavish hotels, even though in Jaffa "they might also be living next to a graveyard." "We wrote a letter to the city of Tel Aviv, asking for an explanation," she said. An answer still was pending. On another occasion, the law clinic sponsored a petition protesting certain taxes— a protest that certainly didn't endear the clinic to budget-conscious Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai. Nevertheless, the municipality continues to contribute to, and cooperate with, the law clinic, Harbon said. Dr. Maggie Navon, a teacher at Tel Aviv University's medical school who also serves as the U.S. representative for the Tel Aviv Foundation, credited Huldai with changing the city's emphasis over the last five years to provide more service to the people of Jaffa. She said that the Price-Brodie Initiative is one program among others helping to lift Jaffa to a higher standard of living. A Jaffa college campus is being built on a 10-acre parcel of land donated by an Israeli family through the foundation, she said. More theaters are moving into Jaffa, including Gesher, considered one of Israel's best. Additionally, the municipality is making a concerted effort to inform residents of Jaffa of the many opportunities available for them for scholarships, she said. "In the past five years, from the time Ron came into power, the emphasis has been on Jaffa in all areas: education, infrastructure, everything is going to a new level. Suddenly, Jaffa got lots of the Tel Aviv budget and everything is improving, although there is still a very long way to go.² She said that it may take 20 years, a generation, to make a major difference, but even now "you can see the fruits." |
