Center aims to return women to workforce

A Jaffa food distribution center has begun a project to employ women who have been out of the workforce.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY
A Jaffa food distribution center has begun a project to employ women who have been out of the workforce for years, reports Yediot Tel Aviv. The project, titled "From Danger to Opportunity" (Mesikun lesikui), aims to reduce the cycle of poverty and unemployment faced by many women in the area, especially single mothers. According to the report, a local charity realized that many of the impoverished children it was helping came from single-parent households, and that most of the mothers had been unemployed for years, for various reasons, and were poorly equipped to get any job. The charity decided that the best way to help the children was to help their mothers gain skills that would help them find employment. So it and the food distribution center decided to launch a special program to employ a number of such women as secretaries and sales people, and at the same time to hold classes to teach them how to use computers, sell products, provide customer service, and run offices. During the year-long program, the women will be paid for their work at the center, and after they complete the course they will be helped to find jobs.