In the past year, we have significantly expanded our work with the Arab community. One of our most exciting accomplishments was launching ELEM’s Arab Community field.
ELEM has been working with Arab youth for many years across all our programs. Yet, we are happy to have a field dedicated to improving and expanding our programs and services to them.
In addition, in the past year we expanded our street work to five Arab towns in Northern Israel and we are planning to expand it even further. We also opened two youth centers in Arab towns Ramle and Majd al-Krum and partnered with the Ministry of Welfare “We See You” initiative to operate our outreach vans in 14 Arab towns across Israel.
As distress indicators worsened, we are committed to continuously improve our services to benefit all youth and young people.
Beyond the numbers we also wanted to share the wise words of Zaki Magid, Supervisor of ELEM’s From Dependence to Independence program in East Jerusalem, which assists graduates of the Youth Protection Services to achieve independent living.
“Thanks to ELEM I see the world differently. In training sessions, I can find myself sitting with a settler on one side and a lesbian woman on the other. Who would have thought that was possible? We are good friends. I know they are not judging me. We put religion aside and focus on the boys. I want to lead social change in my community. I hope to build a partnership that will serve the young people here.”
