Employment Center in Latvia Saves Struggling Family

Ariel Job Center professionals helped Oleg
build his resume, skill set, and self-confidence
to interview successfully.
Photo: JDC website

When Oleg was told that the warehouse where he’d been working for 13 years was bankrupt and closing its doors, he felt the air being wrenched from his chest. He had seen many people lose their jobs in Latvia’s economic crisis, but never thought that it would happen to him; his company had been stable for decades. No matter how desperately Oleg tried to remain calm about his future, all he could picture was the disappointment he’d see in his son Eitan’s eyes. For the first time since the boy was born in 1997, Oleg would not be able to support him. “This was the most demoralizing experience of my life,” shares the 42-year-old father.

Oleg immediately started searching for new employment, but interview after interview yielded no job. He became increasingly depressed and lay awake at night worrying about providing for his family.

Then Oleg learned about JDC’s Ariel Job Center, housed in the same Riga Jewish Community Center where his son participated in JDC’s Children in Need program. Oleg’s family was already receiving subsidies from that program to pay for food, clothing, and utilities as they struggled to live solely on his wife’s recently slashed income. And now he discovered another JDCsupported Jewish community resource, right down the hall.

The Ariel Job Center's relevant and professional services often yield fringe benefit of bringing families closer to their local Jewish community.

Everything changed for Oleg and his family once he began his professional training courses at the Ariel Job Center—a model JDC program to retrain and place young professionals whose jobs had been eliminated in Latvia’s financial crisis.

The Ariel Job Center's relevant and professional
services often yield fringe benefit of bringing
families closer to their local Jewish community.
Photo: JDC Website

For nearly three months, Russian speaking Oleg studied Latvian and learned data- and word-processing programs as well as how to utilize email and online resources to search for jobs. Ariel professionals also gave Oleg personal help to improve his resume and boost his job interview skills—especially his confidence and communication.

Bolstered by this new knowledge, Oleg successfully landed a job overseeing retail distribution at Latvia’s leading home electronics warehouse. Now he studies English and is continuing to grow professionally through Ariel. At the same time, Oleg’s “refreshing” experience with caring and skilled staff at Ariel inspired him to see the Jewish community as a resource not only for Jewish cultural programs for his son, but for practical and critical guidance for his family’s everyday survival.

Today Oleg puts this renewed appreciation for his community into action by volunteering with JDC’s welfare programs to distribute food, medicine, and other assistance to the neediest Jews in the city—and now more than ever he encourages his son to engage in Jewish activities.

DID YOU KNOW?
JDC launched its first Ariel Job Center to combat crisis-related unemployment in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2001 and has since exported the model to Porto Alegre, Brazil; Sofia, Bulgaria; Santiago, Chile; Tallinn, Estonia; Budapest, Hungary; Riga, Latvia; Bucharest, Romania; and Caracas, Venezuela.

FAST FACT
The three Baltic countries had the world's steepest economic declines last year, with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) plunging 17.8 percent in Latvia, 15 percent in Lithuania, and 14.1 percent in Estonia.

20 YEAR AFTER OPERATION SOLOMON, JDC HELPS IMPROVE ETHIOPIAN-ISRAELI LIVES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



New York, May 22, 2011 – Twenty years after the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) took a leading role in the miraculous airlift of more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the humanitarian aid organization continues to support and help integrate Ethiopian Israelis into Israeli society. With dozens of nation-wide programs strengthening the lives of Ethiopian Israelis of all ages, JDC - through the support of the Jewish Federations of North America - helps ensure advancements in early childhood education, employment, and national service.

"Two decades after we helped bring this ancient Jewish community to safety, we're proudly working everyday to fulfill the promise of the startup nation for this and future generations of Ethiopian Israelis," said JDC CEO Steven Schwager. "Just as we praise the many individual successes from this vibrant community, JDC also addresses the challenges it faces in partnership the Government of Israel and together with the laudable efforts of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Ethiopian National Project."

One of JDC's flagship programs, Parents and Children Together (PACT) works to enhance Ethiopian-Israeli children's literacy skills and educational performance to improve their academic success by addressing the unique cultural and language barriers they face. Today, 11,000 children and their families benefit from PACT. Additionally, JDC helps Ethiopian-Israeli high school students overcome language and other academic disadvantage so they can successfully graduate and earn their matriculation certificates.

JDC also helps Ethiopian-Israelis successfully serve in the Israel Defense Forces by guiding these youth and their parents before, during, and after their enrollment. JDC has developed numerous employment services to help Ethiopian-Israelis obtain the skills needed to thrive in a modern workforce. JDC also helps restore dignity and pride among elderly Ethiopian Israelis through a program where they restore run-down communal gardens and transform them into vibrant centers of neighborhood life.

View a slideshow of JDC's work with Ethiopian Israelis - from pre-Operation Solomon to today - and watch a video on JDC's role in the historic airlift celebrated on May 24.

Shabbat in Addis

By Naomi Van Dinter

Naomi is an international development worker currently working on a large project that brings HIV care to over 500,000 people and treatment to over 200,000 people in ten countries while training and empowering local organizations to gradually assume management of the project. The central funding for the project is ending in an effort to bring the management and funding to the country level, and directly to the local partners when possible. Naomi traveled to Ethiopia to help the country program apply for direct, continued funding.

I arrived into Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during the day. I had transited through Addis previously, but only saw the city in the late evening and the early morning. I have traveled through most of Eastern and Southern Africa, yet I was especially eager to take in the sights and sounds of Ethiopia. The country has maintained a private, homogeneous culture with great pride in its traditions and roots.

I was greeted by a welcoming people that were enthusiastic in sharing their unique culture. Every person with whom I spoke wanted to talk about my impressions of Ethiopia and explain a different piece of how their heritage fit into the modern way of life. The cultural restaurants showcasing traditional music and dance, usually reserved for tourists in other African countries, were dominated by the locals – proudly enjoying their country’s food and distinctive dance while relishing the incense from the coffee ceremony at the conclusion of each meal. Along with their deep cultural roots, many of the Ethiopians are deeply religious people who choose to live their religions without judgment or evangelism.

My purpose in visiting Ethiopia was to write a proposal to continue funding for an HIV care and treatment project, however my additional personal interest lay in connecting with Ethiopian Jewish population. Prior to departing, through a contact at the Associated [Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore], I was linked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) who recommended I contact their Country Director, Dr. Rick Hodes. I learned that unfortunately I could not visit the remaining Ethiopian Jewish population as it was too far from Addis, however I received a lovely invitation to spend Shabbat with Dr. Hodes.

Dr. Hodes has become well-known for his work with the local population through the Missionaries of Charity, as well as for caring the Ethiopian Jewish population (through JDC). However, it wasn’t until I arrived at his house did I realize that he truly lived his work.

I arrived at Dr. Hodes house at 6:30PM with a dozen roses in hand, braced for an elegant dinner in one of the large mansions in which high level expats usually live in Africa. Instead of a guard answering the door at the gate, a sweet teenage boy with a severe spinal irregularity welcomed me into the courtyard of Dr. Hodes’ modest home. There, I met a young man who had lost a leg to cancer, another girl who some physical difficulties, and the list went on. There were about 15 children who were all patients of Dr. Hodes, and I presume also orphans, as Dr. Hodes had taken them all in.

The younger ones were attending school and living in small dormitories in the back of the house, while the older children who had graduated were living in another house off-site. Despite the challenges they faced , the children had a warmth and sense a peace around them that I have only experienced in an ashram that I visited many years ago. I imagine that this came from the nurturing of a stable home and a parental figure, and security about their next meal -- all assets that had previously eluded them.

In addition to the children, a group of physical therapy graduate students from the US were socializing in the living room while waiting for Dr. Hodes to arrive. A few Jewish stragglers living in Addis were also in attendance. At around 8PM Dr. Hodes came in and quickly began Shabbat. He asked all of us to form a large circle around the living room and threw “kippot” to all of the men. These kippot were hats of all kinds: jester hats, skull caps, hats with Hanukah lights and such. Dr. Hodes and his children led the group in a rendition of the ‘The Hammer Song.’ He then said a blessing over the bread (skipped the lights), dipped each piece in salt and through it at each person to catch. To honor the Ethiopian Orthodox (Christian) fasting season that many of his children were observing, we all enjoyed a vegan Ethiopian meal.

The evening included a blend of people from different cultures, religions and socio-economic strata that were brought together in respect for a person who was living in solidarity with those he served. I was humbled by the warmth and inclusive atmosphere that I experienced during the Shabbat in Addis. To me, it personified what the core of religion is about: recognizing and honoring the piece of G-d that is living within each of us.

JDC RELEASES OVER 500,000 SEARCHABLE HOLOCAUST-ERA NAMES AND HISTORIC PHOTO COLLECTIONS

Visit the Website - http://www.jdc.org/sharedlegacy

New York, May 2, 2011 ― For the first time in its history, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is making a collection of its historic records and photographs from the Holocaust period available online. The website – www.jdc.org/sharedlegacy – enables the public, especially Holocaust survivors and their families, to perform searches for themselves or others they know on a database of more than 500,000 names and to view and identify photos from 14 countries where JDC operated during and after the war. This will help JDC — known to millions as "The Joint" — fill in the blanks about its impact during this tumultuous time in Jewish history.

"I cannot express the profoundly deep connection I felt to my past and now to JDC when out of nowhere my young face popped up on the screen," said Claus Hirsch, a German-born Shanghai Ghetto survivor who found a photo of himself in the Ghetto during his search on the system. Hirsch’s family was helped by JDC in China during the war, and he found two lists on which his family members’ names appear. Hirsch now lives in Manhattan.

The website will allow users to search the names database compiled from historic documents and JDC client lists from operations in Barcelona, Shanghai, Kobe, Vilna, Australia, South America, and the JDC Emigration Service in Vienna and Munich. A group of volunteer genealogists helped the JDC Global Archives create the database, and are adding new names each week. JDC’s website is being launched at a time when a number of leading organizations and museums are making newly-digitized Holocaust era records available online, allowing broad public access for the first time ever.

“For six decades, the vast majority of this data has been available only to professional researchers,” said JDC CEO Steven Schwager. “Now, thanks to technology, survivors and their descendants can directly engage with our shared history.”

Users can also explore and identify people they know in photo galleries of 1,500 photos from Austria, Belgium, China, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain. JDC is also inviting the public to tag photos and to share their JDC stories from this period in history. JDC was responsible for caring for hundreds of thousands of Jews in places from Cuba to Portugal during and after the Second World War.

"Whether you were a little Jewish child we aided in Barcelona or one of the Jews we supported in Displaced Persons camps after the war, by putting faces, names, and stories together, you will benefit generations to come," said Schwager.

With tens of thousands of documents and photographs from the Holocaust era drawn from JDC collections in New York and Jerusalem, this website aims to add personal stories to JDC’s vast international archive. Every year, hundreds of Holocaust survivors, genealogists, academics, filmmakers, and journalists conduct research in the JDC Global Archives. JDC will launch its Global Archives website in spring 2011 and will make available huge collections of newly-digitized documents and its significant photo collection from the organization’s founding in 1914. The JDC Archives website and digitization project were made possible through a lead gift from Dr. Georgette Bennett and Dr. Leonard Polonsky.