When her son was diagnosed with autism 13 years ago, Hadijah felt terribly alone. The stigma attached to children with disabilities in her village in central Israel led Hadijah to withdraw into a world of herself and her son.
That changed only after she met Amal abu Moch, a social worker at the Beit Issie Shapiro (BIS) Sindian Center in Kalansua, an Arab city in the “Triangle” area of central Israel.
Moch introduced Hadijah to other Arab parents of children with disabilities and guided her in better understanding her son’s needs and legal rights.
”Now I feel I have the tools to help my son and family,” said Hadijah, who was able to find employment once she found the appropriate care framework for her son.
The Sindian Center was founded at the behest of the Israeli government in 2001 as the country’s first early-intervention center for the Arab sector.
Children greeting Family Advancement Center director Nawaf Zmiro at the Sindian Center in Kalansua. Photo: courtesy
Headquartered in Ra’anana, BIS has pioneered a variety of programs to ensure equal rights and integration for Israelis with disabilities.
“We believe children are children, and that’s why from day one at our Ra’anana Center of Excellence we’ve always serviced children from all sectors of Israeli society, from Orthodox Jewish to secular to Arab,” said global resource development director Benjy Maor.
However, these programs are in Hebrew, so to enhance therapeutic effectiveness and cultural sensitivity, the BIS leadership was eager to fulfill the government’s request to start a program for Arabic-speaking families, led by Arab-Israeli personnel.
Sindian (“oak” in Arabic) currently serves 42 children with severe disabilities, ages six months to four years. Statistics suggest some 4,000 children in the southern Triangle have disabilities.
In 2007, BIS opened the Family Advancement Center at Sindian to support and encourage hundreds of parents like Hadijah.
“A lot of people felt nobody would come to Sindian because of the stigma toward people with disabilities in the Arab sector,” Maor told ISRAEL21c. “We believe we have to promote inclusion along with our services to make society better for everybody, so we worked hard to promote a change in attitude and to empower parents in the entire region, as well as strengthen the capacity of professionals.”
The center also runs a hotline advising Arabic speakers about disability rights, as well as a leadership program at Kalansua’s high school to promote social-action projects.
The Family Advancement Center is headed by Nawaf Zmiro, a disabled activist who speaks across Israel about his own physical challenges to raise public awareness. In 2012, Zmiro received a Presidential Award for Volunteerism from then-President Shimon Peres.
During a visit from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro last October, Kalansua Mayor Salameh Abed Albacete announced his intention to donate land for a permanent home for the Sindian Center, which now operates in a rented facility.
From left, BIS Sindian Center Director Majda Marei; US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro; Nawaf Zmiro, director of the Family Advancement Center and Hotline; Benjy Maor of Beit Issie Shapiro; and Amal Abu Moch, a social worker at Sindian. Photo courtesy of US Embassy in Tel Aviv
A Jewish father from Ra’anana and an Arab mother from Kalansua told Shapiro how they met through the Family Advancement Center. The ambassador was shown stories written in their respective languages by Jewish and Arab speech therapists for kids with disabilities, and spoke with area youth who did social-action projects such as promoting inclusivity in local businesses.
“As much as [this program is] about first and foremost the families and the children and the rights of those people, it has become something else; it has become something that has brought parts of the society together who didn’t know each other and felt distance and distrust and fear, and have that found common language on what is the most important thing in the world — their children,” said Shapiro.
(via Israel21c)
[Photo: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv / Flickr ]