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Immigrants with disabilities who feel locked out of the fast paced learning
environment of the mainstream ulpan system, will soon have a new opportunity to
study Hebrew if an initiative currently being piloted in Haifa is
successful.
Under the auspices of Israel Unlimited, a partnership between
the government, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the
Ruderman Family Foundation aimed at improving the overall inclusion of people
with disabilities in society, the new style ulpan is specially tailored to teach
those with special needs the language of their newly adopted
country.
Accessibility for people in wheelchairs, shorter learning hours,
an overall slower pace and teachers trained in special education and sign
language are all elements that have been considered in this new style
ulpan.
“The idea came from the field and we came with the research,” said
Israel Unlimited’s Avital Sandler-Loeff. “It has been tried before or been
addressed in individual cases but we hope that this program will also include
helping immigrants with disabilities in a general sense be better absorbed in
their new home.”
In Haifa, where the ulpan started in May and is being
run in conjunction with the local AHVA Center for Independent Living, the
program currently includes 20 new and veteran olim with varying types of
disabilities who failed to learn Hebrew in the mainstream system.
“I
couldn’t understand anything at the other ulpans”, commented one of the
participants, a dance teacher who became clinically depressed after a serious
traffic accident.
“Here the teacher explains slowly and clearly. You can
ask her anything, again and again, and she explains calmly,
patiently.”
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Tatiana Sermon, the ulpan’s coordinator, is the one who came
up with the idea and approached Israel Unlimited.
She herself is
vision-impaired and was unable to attend ulpan after she made aliya due to ill
health. While medical treatment has improved her vision and she was able to
teach herself Hebrew at home with the help of a radio program ulpan, Sermon said
she was resolved to set up a proper ulpan especially for people with
disabilities.
While the current pilot is focused on teaching immigrants
with disabilities in a group, Israel Unlimited’s Sandler- Loeff said she is
working with the Education Ministry to not only expand this format to six other
cities but also to provide training to existing ulpan teachers so they can
better cater to the disabled immigrant population.
According to a survey
carried out by the Myers-JDCBrookdale Institute in 2009, there are roughly
125,000 immigrants with disabilities, about one-third of them with severe
disabilities. The research found that more than a third of these disabled
immigrants don’t speak Hebrew at all, or do so very poorly, and almost 60
percent are illiterate in Hebrew despite being well-educated.
In
addition, focus groups carried by Israel Unlimited revealed that not knowing
Hebrew is a significant barrier in realization of entitlements and integration
within society.
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