The sky is the limit

The Azrieli Foundation Empowerment Program aims to preempt adolescent issues by working with middle school-aged children and helping them realize their true potential.

By LIAT SHPIGLER
Azrieli foundation staff Meir Avitan and Iris Arkin. 370 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Azrieli foundation staff Meir Avitan and Iris Arkin. 370
(photo credit: Courtesy)
From the 48th floor of the round Azrieli tower in Tel Aviv, a view of what seems like the entire country spreads out below Azrieli Foundation chairwoman Danna Azrieli’s office.
Her organization has been running an empowerment program for middle school children in need since 2004, when a steering committee consisting of the Rashi Foundation, her foundation, the Beersheba Municipality and the Education Ministry met to formulate ideas on how to assist these children holistically.
Until then, says Azrieli, middle school kids were “untouched ground.”
The empowerment program grew out of the idea that in order to nip future obstacles in the bud it is crucial to start assisting adolescents at the point in their lives from which academic, social and familial difficulties are likely to stem.
“This link between childhood and young adulthood is complete with the emergence of hormones, and thus feelings of angst, loss of self-esteem and peer pressure,” says the foundation chairwoman.
And as if a child’s transformation into adolescence is not hard enough, the phenomenon of ongoing aliya leaves a large portion of the country’s teenage population contending with the hurdles of integrating into Israeli society.
“Aliya” literally means “ascending to Israel,” and this program also aims to ensure that once these young olim have arrived, they can reach their own personal pinnacles.
ONCE THE target population was determined, the organizers launched a pilot in Beersheba. Thirty children were hand-picked from one middle school, and their parents paid a NIS 35 fee to attend a workshop on how to work with their children in this endeavor.
The criteria for choosing these students came from the program’s national director Meir Avitan, who believed that students who showed aptitude and whose grades had once been above average but had dropped considerably could be brought back into the fold.
Avitan also considered which teachers should lead these teens back to their personal heights. Would they be external teachers who had no preconceived notions, or educators already present at the school? The final decision was to use the latter and retrain them. This decision proved successful, since in addition to learning how to approach the Azrieli program adolescents, the teachers went back to their regular classrooms and applied their new tools there.
Following the success of the Beersheba pilot, additional principals and mayors jumped on the bandwagon, leading to an executive decision to make an across-the-board sweep in each city. All middle schools in all cities chosen would benefit from the program and so would all populations – secular and religious, Jewish, Muslim and Christian.
One student who has benefitted is Haim Mazor, an eighth-grader at the religious Mikve Israel School in Bat Yam, who had a number of odds against him. Each day he contends with a household that is less than stable.
His parents have married and divorced each other numerous times.
He has four siblings, and his little brother has been diagnosed with cancer.
His mother spends her time in a continuous race between home and the hospital, and when the father is actually present at home, he is entirely nonfunctional.
Mazor’s older sister has taken on the role of mother.
The chaotic situation at home left him unmotivated to thrive academically, but he says the empowerment program offered him the chance to view things differently.
“I started at zero with English and was weak in math, and now I know how to read and am getting 90s and 100s on my English and math tests,” says Mazor, who found the informal approach of the afterschool program inviting. “There weren’t strict teachers who sat on you to do your work, there were snacks and a hot meal.”
He is now successful not only academically, but socially as well: He is an active member of the student council, which provides him with a positive outlet for escaping his domestic difficulties.
SEEING SUCH achievements, Avitan became eager to expand the program.
“Meir would come and sit here and say, let’s take on another city,” says Azrieli.
Slowly but surely – with two or three schools chosen for inclusion each year – the program spread its wings in over 30 cities, improving the lot of nearly 6,000 students and helping about 3,000 parents. Its activities have been funded by the Azrieli family’s Canadian foundation and fully managed and operated by its Israeli counterpart.
Avitan says he is still shocked that teens willingly forgo their free time for further studies – they attend the program twice a week, from 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. – but he believes that the chain of personal achievements is what leads these children to persist.
One of the secrets to the program’s effectiveness is that each child receives unlimited opportunities to succeed on all tests. The program is set up in such a way that tests can be retaken as many times as needed until students reach a minimum of 80 percent.
This leaves room solely for accomplishment.
“About 97% of all middle school teens who enter the program stick with it until the end. And of these students, 61% do the mandatory matriculation exams, where the national percentage stands at 59%,” says Avitan.
High school graduate Gal Raz from Karmiel says that at first, it was “dreadful” to study for another four-and-a-half hours a week, but then “the program made me change my frame of mind – it made me realize that I am doing something for myself.”
The program’s academic focus is primarily on English and math, and Raz received a 98% on her English matriculation exam and a “90-something percent in math.”
Socially she has also reached new heights: She is active in the Israel Scouts, volunteers at Magen David Adom and is the president of the municipal student council.
Avi Museri, an eighth-grade student at the Hammer School in Bat Yam, has also made a complete turnaround via the program. In the seventh grade, he was on the verge of transferring to a special education program. Since joining the Azrieli program, he has improved by leaps and bounds and has excelled in English and math.
His mother, Rivka, has been an active participant since day one and has taken part in all Azrieli-related parent workshops. In a clear expression of her high hopes for her son, she has hung a sign on his bedroom door reading “Attorney Avi Museri.” She says he is a “natural mediator” and now knows that all professions are open to him.
THIS YEAR, the empowerment program took some 2,000 students to Rishon Lezion’s Superland amusement park for the day, to show appreciation for the large steps the teens took this past year in their scholastic achievements and social empowerment.
For those present at the end-of-year celebrations at the amusement park, this day signified that they had reached the high school threshold, and from here on in, they would continue on their own path to the matriculation exams.
Regardless of when a teen enters the program, at the end of ninth grade they must do two things to seal the experience: create a volunteer initiative, and participate in the “David’s Strength” workshop. The workshop – named after Azrieli’s father, who resides both in Canada and in Israel – is a course in which 150 haredi, national religious, secular, Muslim and Christian students convene to discuss Israeli societal topics.
At the end of the ninth grade, the young adults move on to high school with their new tools.
Throughout 10th grade they meet 15 times to ensure that they have successfully maintained what they attained.
Azrieli herself spoke with great emotion at the amusement park event.
“You are at the end of a school year in which you – teenagers – have taken upon yourselves an extraordinary responsibility. And for this, I appreciate each and every one of you,” she said. “It warms my heart to see your social power and strength. There is no doubt that the sense of mission the directors of the Azrieli Foundation Empowerment Program and I feel today gives us the power to continue our activities. The appreciation we receive is in your success.”