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To:
Roswitha Ott
SI/E 2nd Vice-President

Re: Report on the Action Fund Project for the Ethiopian Immigrants in Kiryat Moshe Israel 2002

The Ethiopian women were invited to participate in different activities beginning in January 2002. Every week the women between the ages for 30 to 55 come to the club. The soroptimist members of the clubs of Rehovot, Rishon Le Zion and Givatayim come to the club.

At the beginning we participated in club activities which were thought to be suitable for new immigrants. But very soon we understood that we had to find a different way to reach and form relations with our partners.

We believe now that the most important issue is learning Hebrew and if possible reading and writing. So in order to reach this stage we have begun once a week to invite the women to participate in activities that make it possible for us to speak directly to them and not through a translator.

We have developed a few activities; physical exercises that can be done and through them you can learn the words for different parts of your body, learning about the origin of the names of the women - both the Ethiopian and of the Soroptimists, working together in clay and describing the meaning of the objects created. Celebrating the different Jewish festivals to both learn about them and the sybols of these holidays. During Hannuka - the lighting of the candles, during the Fesival of trees the symbols - trees, the fruits fo all the fruit trees in Israel and then learning songs in Hebrew. In this instance we had help of writing the Hebrew words in Maharit (the Ethiopian language) so that the women could sing along more easily. Making art work together and so on.

It is a slow process but we believe that with our volunteers we can form new relations that will bring the women closer to mainstream society, will make it possible for them to help their children in their school work and in the future to finding suitable jobs.

There are about 12 Soroptimists who volunteer their time. When the activity is interesting more than 20 women participate. We hope that when we can reach a closer relationships we will understand better what activities are the most suitable.

The director of the club and the translator have worked along side us during this time and the budget for this was paid for by the money received from the Action Fund

Until the first of January 2003 we paid out the following sums:

Director: 4,953 CHF Translator: 2,477 CHF

We will have 4,570 CHF for the next year. We will use this only for the director and the translator will be paid for by the Rehovt Municipality.

Sincerely

Hava Inbar
President SI/Israel


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