TORONTO — Yuvi Tashome can’t say with absolute certainty that the organization she co-founded to help the Ethiopian community is solely responsible, but she has been told that four years ago Magen David Adom used to receive two calls a day to send ambulances to Gedera because of violence, including stabbings – and today that number is down to zero.
Yuvi Tashome [Frances Kraft photo]
“We were amazed,” Tashome told The CJN in a Passover interview, when she was here at the invitation of the New Israel Fund of Canada (NIFC), which funds her organization, to speak to 125 people at a “liberation seder” at Beth Tzedec Congregation (co-sponsored by NIFC) about her journey to Israel and the work she does today.
The 32-year-old director of Friends by Nature – a non-governmental organization she started with eight people – left Ethiopia at age 6 and immigrated to Israel with her family as part of Operation Moses after walking through the Sudanese desert.
Friends by Nature is committed to long-term work that empowers Ethiopian youth at risk and their families in Gedera, which has an Ethiopian Jewish population of 1,700.
“We wanted to do deep work with the Ethiopian community,” said Tashome, who has a degree in education and Israeli studies from Ashkelon College, a satellite of Bar-Ilan University. “We knew something was wrong with the way the [existing] programs were helping them. We thought that one of the problems was that everything is a project for one, two or three years, and then it’s over.”
As well, she added, programs she was familiar with had originated outside the Ethiopian community and had no Ethiopians in managerial positions.
Before co-founding the new group four years ago, Tashome ran a program that facilitated hikes for young people from grades 7 through 12, and opened dialogue about Ethiopia and Israel. “It was good, but not good enough,” she said.
Among the issues facing the Ethiopian Israeli community are poor school attendance, drug and alcohol abuse, and run-ins with police among youth, who make up more than half the Ethiopian population in Gedera.
Tashome believes a major problem is that many Ethiopian Israeli young people “haven’t found themselves” as Ethiopians or Israelis.
“They don’t belong anywhere.” Those born in Israel “don’t know anything about their parents being powerful. They only know the weakness of their parents.”
Tashome’s story is different. Her mother, who was widowed in Ethiopia and remarried another Ethiopian in Israel, “did a lot of things that were the exception,” Tashome said. She ran an NGO for children in Ashkelon, told Ethiopian stories to kindergarten students as a volunteer, and is now studying for a degree.
As a child growing up in Ashkelon and other cities, Tashome did her homework at programs that were run for Ethiopian youth.
“Nothing really happened in the house, and the message of that was that your family is not good enough,” she said.
But when youngsters feel comfortable bringing their friends home, it keeps them off the streets, she explained.
One of the programs she runs now is called Homework at Home. “It’s a funny name, because homework is supposed to be at home,” Tashome said. “Other programs take them out of the house.”
Ethiopian youngsters may find it difficult to do homework at home because of the number of siblings in the house, lack of quiet, and lack of a computer and proper table, Tashome said.
As part of the program, teachers visit the home on a weekly basis to work with small groups of children. “After a while you see the mother and father have their motivation. They turn off the TV, take the [younger] kids to another room.”
Some families, after time in the program, have decided to buy computers or change the lighting to make it more conducive to doing homework.
Friends by Nature has also run hiking programs for young people and their parents. “During the trip, [young people] see that the parents know so much about things that grow in Israel and what you can do with them. It’s the first time they know that their parents know something that is relevant to Israeli life.” Often it is a springboard for further parent-child discussion, she explained.
As well, Friends by Nature has a volunteer program for young adults who have finished their army service. Participants identify needs in the community, plan and implement solutions, and are also taken to tour Israeli universities with an eye to their own future plans.
They become role models for younger Ethiopians, Tashome said. “It’s about empowerment.”
The changes Tashome’s group is working toward seem to help Ethiopian youth integrate better into the larger Israeli society, she notes.
“We noticed that if you know more about your Ethiopian culture, Ethiopian masoret [tradition], and have experience of your parents with knowledge and power, then… that gives the kids self-confidence to have friends who are not Ethiopian.”
For Tashome – whose husband, a seventh-generation Israeli, is also a co-founder of Friends by Nature – her work has become even more personally motivated in the last few years.
As the mother of a three-year-old, who is expecting her second child in September, Tashome said, “What we’re trying to do is to live in the neighbourhood for a lifetime, raising our kids there. The motivation is very personal. It’s for my kids, so I’m working hard.”
