Learning at SHATIL Changes Lives: Spring Course Round Up

July 7, 2008

At its best, a SHATIL workshop can be a life-changing event, affecting not only the activist-participant, but ever-widening circles of people throughout the country. This spring, for example, Hanin Majdala’s views of people with disabilities were transformed during the Social Change Course for Persons with Disabilities. Although not disabled herself, Hanin works with disabled people at the Alyn Hospital. Hanin allowed NIF News a peek into her diary:

“When I began the course, I knew I'd be faced with a different reality, one I wasn't accustomed to, without a desk I could hide behind, without files to create a border between me and my clients, and without a big sign explicitly stating my profession: social worker.

“My place is so clear. What I do at Alyn is so clear. But when I got to this forum, all my assumptions were called into question. I was unaware of the strength these people have. That thought led me to ponder how anchored I am in pathology, in which we view people living with disabilities via those disabilities and forget to ask ourselves if they have anything to offer beyond their wheelchairs. I felt, suddenly and oppressively, that I was the disabled one — mentally, not physically. I thought about the many clients I'd received in my office who may have suffered from my attitude. I also discovered that I needed their permission to enter their world—another world that, until now, as I discovered in these meetings, was separated from my own by a fence that I didn't even know existed. The sessions led me to change a lot of things in the language I use with clients who come to me at work. I stopped calling them "patients" and stopped writing that sentence I realized was so irritating: ‘The aforementioned suffers from…’

“Alongside these changes, I felt I was experiencing something wonderful, something I'd never before experienced: I learned about creating initiatives and translating ideas and dreams into reality. Now I want to have a part in influencing and changing, to be an agent of change — not on behalf of persons with disabilities but together with them.”

Hanin is already planning to lead a similar course for Arabs in East Jerusalem next year. The course was conducted in cooperation with David Yellin College, Shekel Community Services for People with Special Needs and the Center for Independent Living.

A scene from the Developing Local Sustainable Economies course

Sometimes a course leads to action even before it ends. While Hanin was having her eyes opened in her course, Dina Kozak was taking part in a SHATIL-organized course in Jerusalem, “Sprouting Change: Community Gardening as a Focus for Building Local Power.”

“The course gave me the idea of connecting Holocaust survivors with our community garden,” Dina wrote. The project launched in June. 

In addition to Hanin and Dina, hundreds of other activists throughout the country upgraded their skills in dozens of SHATIL courses including: Monitoring and Tracking Government Decisions and Actions, the Arab Press’s Treatment of People with Disabilities, Citizen Involvement in the Municipal Budget Process, Community Organizing, Developing Local Sustainable Economies (with the Heschel Center), Branding and Positioning Strategies, Microfinance and many more.