Job training helps build healthy Palestinian society
10/15/2003 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn.
This story may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #490. Photos are available.
By Paul Jeffrey*
Women
in the West Bank village of Beita are producing honey as part of an
income generation program carried out by Action by Churches Together
member International Orthodox Christian Charities. A UMNS photo by Paul
Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-362, Accompanies UMNS #492, 10/14/03
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Children of War. Photo number W03042, Accompanies UMNS#490
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Palestinian
women participate in an income generation program carried out by Action
by Churches Together member International Orthodox Christian Charities
in the West Bank village of Beita. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT.
Photo number 03-364, Accompanies UMNS #492, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
Wajdi
Munar, 19, graduated in 2002 from the Action by Churches
Together-supported Vocational Training Center, run by the Lutheran World
Federation in Beit Hanina. Today he is one of a minority of
Palestinians with steady employment. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT.
Photo number 03-363, Accompanies UMNS #492, 10/14/03
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Daily Life
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A woman in Aboud harvests almonds. A UMNS photo by Paul Jeffrey / ACT. Photo number 03-361, Accompanies UMNS #492, 10/14/03
No Long Caption Available for this Story
JERUSALEM (UMNS)-Ala Kleibo recently upgraded his
skills as an auto mechanic, and his customers claim he's a whiz at
keeping their cars in top shape.
Yet Kleibo spends hours sitting
in his shop in Bir Nabala drinking cardamom-laced coffee, his business
suffering from the Israeli occupation of his West Bank town.
"There
are checkpoints everywhere, so it takes forever to drive from one place
to another," he explains. "I have lots of customers in Beit Hanina,
which is less than five minutes away. But for the last two years it
takes two hours each way to drive through the checkpoints."
Earlier
this year, the 40-year-old Palestinian mechanic participated in a
three-month professional refresher course at the Lutheran World
Federation's Vocational Training Center in Beit Hanina.
Along
with several other vocational training and income generation projects in
the occupied Palestinian territories, the VTC is supported by Action by
Churches Together, the worldwide network of churches and church-related
agencies responding to emergencies. The United Methodist Committee on
Relief is an active member of ACT.
Kleibo's plight illustrates
the difficulties of working in an economy under siege, where a third of
all workers are unemployed, a figure that more than doubles in some
hard-hit communities.
Just up the street from Kleibo's auto shop,
Musallam Herbawi runs a carpentry shop. Herbawi used to have dozens of
Israeli customers who appreciated the quality cabinets that he and his
seven workers produced. Then came the road closures and curfews, and his
business has dropped in half. He has only three workers now.
One
is 19-year-old Abed Al-Wahab Samody, who last year graduated from a
two-year carpentry course at the vocational center. Herbawi is impressed
with the novice worker, and with his training. "He's still young, but
he has learned well. They did a good job teaching him. They gave him the
keys to learn more and become a true professional," Herbawi says.
The
Vocational Training Center was founded in 1952 to help Palestinian
farmers who had lost their land to the newly formed state of Israel make
the transition to life as industrial workers. Over the decades, it has
trained thousands of carpenters, metal workers, plumbers and auto
mechanics. It has also continued to evolve, adding electronic
telecommunications repair and maintenance to the curriculum three years
ago.
With electronics, the training center added women students
for the first time. Rawa' Rabah is one of them. A 2002 graduate, the
19-year-old works today in a mobile phone shop in Ramallah. She knows
her stuff, and prefers to sit at a bench in the back room fixing tiny
circuit boards but spends most of her workdays behind the counter in the
store, demonstrating phones to prospective customers.
"Although
I'd prefer to be in back fixing things, I can live with marketing,"
Rabah says. "I enjoy working with people, and at least I have a job.
That's more than a lot of people have these days."
Such
versatility is necessary in a challenging work environment, according to
Randa Hilal Nassar, the training center's director.
"These
students were trained in both the repair and the marketing of electronic
equipment," she explains. "Most businesses in Palestine are small
family businesses with less than five employees, so they look for people
who are versatile, who can handle maintenance, marketing,
bookkeeping-the whole range of skills necessary to make a business run
well."
Many of the women students come to the training center
from family environments, where contact with men outside the family was
mediated by fathers or brothers, so for women students like Rabah,
additional time is spent in self-awareness and assertiveness training to
help them survive in a male-dominated business culture.
The
Vocational Training Center's curriculum also focuses on helping the
school's 170 students develop attitudes and skills for building a
functional Palestinian civil society. "We've integrated into the
curriculum the experience of democratic relations, not just by talking
to the students about it but in the way we treat them," Nassar says.
Other
ACT members working in the Palestinian territories also offer a variety
of vocational training and income generation programs. International
Orthodox Christian Charities, for example, trains women in beekeeping
and other agricultural production, as well as quilting and puppet
making, in programs throughout the West Bank.
"Even in the worst
circumstances, there is work to be done," says Nora Kort, the country
director of International Orthodox Christian Charities/ACT. "So it's
important for people to stand on their own two feet and create an
alternative economy." # # # *Jeffrey is a United Methodist
missionary in Central America who traveled to the Palestinian
territories as a field communicator for Action by Churches Together.
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