My encounter with the Ethiopian Community

Before arriving here, I heard many stories about the Ethiopian-Israeli Community. First and foremost, its struggle to arrive to the promised land is the one that struck me the most. The need for shelter and freedom of this community reminded me of the stories I heard from world war two survivors in Europe. My decision to volunteer with the organisation is therefore combined with an obligation I feel towards all the people that need help in society.
My second visit to Petah Tiqwah Youth Center to that extent was far from exciting. The Youth Center is located in one of the poorest areas of the city. Hardly anyone spoke English, or "Anglit". A young female soldier showed me around and introduced me to a group of youngsters playing soccer. I felt at first no interaction and was beginning to feel annoyed.

However, despite this first moment of hardship, I did not feel let down. The day after I came back again and stood with the kids for longer. That day, I felt I achieved much more and I seriously started to enjoy my time. I took the kids to a climbing gym and played with two little girls. Ofek and Shiri, I still remember their names. Only Ofek spoke some English. However, both of them, through the natural empathy kids have, were more than able to communicate with me. Shiri was scared of climbing, but through some advice coming from myself, and doing everything by herself, step to step, she climbed the wall to the top. Ofek too did well. Now I started to feel really useful. Once back to the Youth Center, I came back to the football field where I felt left out the day before and really made a difference: now I was refereeing the football matches and told the kids the rule. Not only were they eager to follow the rules, but they took the game more seriously. That was an incredible achievement. I played football all evening long until 10pm. One more hour, I played cards with the two girls mentioned above and then went back home to Tel Aviv.

In such a short time, I found the right amount of motivation to stay here and have a positive impact. By the end of it, I hope to have a basic level of Ivrit as well in order to improve my spoken interaction with the kids, but so far, so good !

Giacomo Paoloni

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