About Yad Rachel
Another volunteer activity was held at our Aferschool Center in Bat Yam by the Sports Association of Holon. They offered the kids sportive training with attractive equipment and had a soccer match between the Center’s kids and their own children. During the year a number of such meetings are planned to take place.
All our Centers celebrated Hanukkah with a scope of special festive activities. Most places have held a party together with the parents, providing unique and fun experience while discovering together symbolic meanings of the holiday, its customs and traditions, the connection between these symbols, paying attention to the emotional aspect of working with children and family members. Nitzan and Mavki’im Centers held the traditional event Mishpahanuka. Both Centers offered the children and their parents a full day of activities. The families were engaged in a very special way and shared the experience with children. The feedbacks in both Centers were very positive and exciting. These days were made possible thank to a huge effort of the teams before and of and during the activities. Here is a short video link tor you to have a taste of this unique experience:
As a part of personnel training program, at regular intervals throughout the year there are being held various enrichment courses and seminars. These seminars cover issues relevant to our work with children and their families, as we strive to professionalize it and to give our staff the greatest variety of tools to help them cope with the challenges they face working in our Centers. During the last month we’ve offered our team in Jerusalem to take a part in a course on puppetry. Our counsellors had learned and experienced working with puppets and received an additional and very creative tool with which they can conduct a therapeutic dialog with the children.
In our work we’ve created relationships with many volunteers, some individuals and some come as a pert of organizations. During the previous year we’ve created a strong partnership with a team of El Al employees, who have visited a number of times during the year at our Afterschool Center in Ramle, bringing along lots of accessories for various activities and especially a lot of positive attitude and a desire to give. At the end of the year, the children were invited to visit the company’s main site at Ben Gurion Airport. We were pleased when during this Chanukah, our contact with the team was renewed and they came back and took a part in center’s work.
The children of the Yahav and Hayovel Afterschool Centers, the two Centers we run in Bat Yam, have begun taking part in an art project in cooperation with the Bat Yam Museum. The project brings the children to the Museum once a week, and for an hour and a half they learn about various art-related topics and create artwork on the subject they learned about. At the end of the project, a serious exhibition will take place at the Museum, where the children will present their work to their families and the broad public.
In “Yeda” school in Kiryat Bialik, where we consult and support counselling team by training staff at the school, we’ve offered a Seminar on sharpening their main task as counsellors at school, focusing on difficulties that tend to arise and various productive ways to deal with them.
Following quite a few bureaucratic difficulties, we are happy to have re-opened the Bar’am Afterschool Center. This is the fifth year the Center has been operating in the city, and it seems to be very important to the families and children. The first parent-child meeting this year took place recently. During the activity, each family prepared a sign for their home. The activity was very successful. The children and parents were excited to create together, and the atmosphere was excellent. After the activity, each family took the sign home. This Afterschool Center, like the others, emphasize work with children and parents together, based on the professional approach of working with a child in the context of the family.
The Yad Rachel Afterschool Center at Bat Yam has received a synthesizer. The team has decided very creatively to use the synthesizer as an additional tool for working with the children. They have begun teaching the kids how to play, and the kids have learned to use it as a new way to calm down when they need to, and just for enjoying the music, too.
At the Bat Ayin Center, the staff chose to apply their musical abilities and teach the children how to play guitar. The parents contributed a symbolic payment, and Yad Rachel funded the rest, and so each child received a guitar. Once a week their counselors give them a guitar playing class.
At the Afterschool Centers, we look for the healthy abilities in children and make an effort to strengthen these abilities and improve their positive experience
Jérusalem, le 17 novembre 2015
Chers amis,
Les familles de Yad Rachel, la direction et moi-même, tenons à vous faire savoir que nous sommes dans la peine et que nos pensées sont avec vous, en ces jours difficiles.
Il est important que vous sachiez que nous sommes solidaires du peuple français, dans cette terrible épreuve. Il n’y a pas de mots devant tant de barbarie.
Malheureusement, nous, Israéliens, connaissons que trop bien la terreur, mais la vie doit reprendre ces droits. Ne laissons pas la violence prendre le pas.
Nous espérons que vous allez bien et qu’il nous sera possible de nous rencontrer dans des moments plus faciles.
Je vous prie de recevoir, chers amis et partenaires, l’expression de ma plus profonde sympathie,
Sara Weil-Mann
Directrice
In the city of Bat Yam, we run two Afterschool Centers for children with behavioral difficulties, as well as a Parent-Child Center for families with very young children (Paths to Parenthood). This month, an introductory encounter took place between the teams of both frameworks. Each team presented the work of its framework, which led to a joint learning experience. We are expecting collaboration between the different units we are keeping in the city, for the benefit of the families and children. This collaboration is the added value of Yad Rachel’s work in the different projects.
