Learning, Family-Style

Federation-supported program teaches
Ethiopian-Israeli parents along with their children.

Eliot Goldstein of JDC,
Tanya Mazur-Posner,
associate director
of Federation's Israel
and Overseas Department,
Anat Penso and
Matti Elias of JDC.

7

TAT

6/1

2001

DIANA LIEBERMAN
Staff Writer

T

he Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit has made a
commitment to provide major financial
support for a new family-oriented pre-
school program in the Israeli town of
Netanya.
So far, Federation has allocated
$360,000 from its Israel and Overseas
Department for start-up and seed money
to Parents and Children Together
(PACT). A program of the American
Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
(JDC), PACT is designed to help new
immigrants from Ethiopia assimilate into
Israeli society as well as to provide an
educational head start to their children.
Federation is committed to support the
program for another two to three years,
said Howard Neistein, Federation's chief
planning officer. Funding for the next fis-
cal year has not yet been determined.
The program is open to families with
children from infancy to age 6. Although
it is oriented toward Ethiopian immi-
grants, all families are welcome to partici-
pate.
Michael Horowitz of West Bloomfield,
co-chair of Federation's Israel and
Overseas Department, said Detroit's con-

tribution to the program is "not addition-
al money going overseas."
Instead, it's part of a recent directive
within Federation to allow committees to
decide where part of their allocation will
be directed. Other elective uses of the
Israel and Overseas Department's 2000-
2001 allocation included support for .
Partnership 2000, an economic and social
partnership between the Detroit commu-
nity and communities in Israel's central
Galilee, and funding for a Jewish .
Community Center in the Ukrainian city
of Kiev.
Israel's population includes about
80,000 Ethiopian ohm (immigrants). The
Ethiopian immigrants left their besieged
homeland to seek freedom in an unfamil-
iar country with unfamiliar customs.
According to JDC figures, another 400-
500 of these immigrants arrive each
month.
"We in Detroit have a strong feeling
that the task of absorbing Ethiopian
immigrants shouldn't fall on Israel alone,"
Horowitz said.
PACT, which began in September
1998, now runs programs in five Israeli
communities. Each receives its major
sponsorship from a Jewish Federation in
the United States. The remainder comes
from each municipality and from Israel's
ministries of Labor and Social Affairs and
Education.
Program costs for Netanya's PACT pro-
gram will be $2,000 for each child per
year, said JDC international relations
associate Eliot Goldstein. Goldstein and
two other JDC representatives were in
Detroit May 23 to educate Federation
leaders about the project and to lay the
groundwork for partnerships between
children involved in PACT and
preschoolers in the Detroit area.
The JDC is seeking a future financial
commitment from the Detroit Federation
to PACT of $1,200 per child per year, for
an estimated 1,100 children, Goldstein
said.
In addition to providing preschool
classes, PACT sends liaisons from the
Ethiopian community to work with par-
ents in their homes and in the communi-
ty. The liaisons teach Hebrew, Israeli cus-

toms, modern parenting and coping
skills. They also educate the educators.
"The liaison not only translates from
Amharic to Hebrew," said JDC represen-
tative Matti Elias. "They also translate
between cultures."
Elias, who emigrated from Ethiopia in
1956, heads JDC's Ethiopian-Israeli lead-
ership training programs.
There is no early childhood education
in Ethiopia, Elias said. But, while Israeli
parents are also not required to provide
early childhood education, about 95 per-
cent of Israeli-born 3-year-olds do attend
preschool, compared with 45 percent of
Ethiopian-Israelis.
And only 20 percent of Ethiopian-
Israelis graduate from high school, as
compared with 48 percent of other
Israelis.
"We need the community leaders to
bring their families to this program,"
Elias said. "For first grade, the parents
must be educational partners."
"When they get a note from the
teacher saying there's a field trip tomor-
row and their child should bring a jacket,
they'll know what they are reading,"
added Anat Penso, area director for
JDC's Ethiopian-Israeli educational ini-
tiatives.
Penso compared PACT to the Head
Start program in the United States,
adding that the new Israeli program was
more comprehensive in its goals. "We
learn from each other," she said.
Currently, PACT serves 2,500 children
in five Israeli communities. In addition
to the Ethiopian olim, this number
includes about 5,500 so-called "veteran"
Israelis from lower-income families.
"We do not discriminate," Penso said.
"It is not our intention just to promote
this community"
As Ethiopian families are integrated
into Israeli society, PACT educators see
their involvement decreasing. "We have
no intention to run this program forev-
er," Penso said.
In addition to the new PACT in'
Netanya, another will begin this
September in Rehovot.
"Our obligation is to get every child
what they need," Goldstein said."

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