The Benjamin Children’s Library Mentoring Program for Ethiopian Girls
By Sandy Cash
It’s a familiar scene in Bet Shemesh. Adults arriving to pick out books in the upstairs section of the Benjamin Children’s Library are happy to share the space with a boisterous bunch: the neighborhood kids who frequent the Library’s drop-in Learning Center, where children get free help with their homework. But many Library patrons don’t know that the Center’s professional staff also supervises another initiative: a Mentoring Program designed to nurture the leadership potential of girls in the Ethiopian community.
“The Mentoring Program is all about investing in tomorrow’s citizens,” says Tova Kastiel-Aharon, a former employee of the Ministry of Education who tutors at the Learning Center and co-directs the program for Ethiopian girls. “Our weekly meetings involve activities that teach responsibility, teamwork, and communication skills, while giving girls the knowledge they need to become active, contributing members of society. The Benjamin Children’s Library Mentoring Program is designed to help Ethiopian girls define their dreams, and give them the skills they need to achieve them.”
Targeting girls in the 7th grade and up, the Program’s activities also benefit other Ethiopian youngsters in the community. “We challenge the girls to take personal responsibility for one or two younger children, and initiate programs for larger groups,” says Sima Yitzchak, Kastiel-Aharon’s partner in the supervising the project, whose professional background is in early childhood education. “Through activities and study modules, we introduce the girls to the great leaders of the Jewish people – from Moshe Rabbenu to Ben Gurion – and help them apply what they learn to the development of their own leadership style. This is very significant for girls for whom just speaking up in a loud voice is often very difficult.”
The Mentoring Program emphasizes responsibility – a lesson that is driven home by defining the girls’ duties as a job, and paying 10 shekels in pocket money to those girls who fully honored their commitment. “If a girl doesn’t come to a meeting because, say, she has a family party, she loses this money, which is a significant amount for her,” Kastiel-Aharon says. “This helps prepare her for adult life. Little by little, we see the effect that this payment has on each participant’s habits, as well as her self-esteem.”
At the same time, the Mentoring Program promotes the value of volunteerism. The girls help out regularly at the Library – a volunteer-run organization that serves 2,000 members and welcomes some 200 children five days a week with only two paid staff librarians, while receiving no funding from the city. “For the past four years we’ve happily served as the home base for the Mentoring program, providing a meeting room, supplies, and – when our original donor funding ran out – paying for the entire program out of the Library’s very limited budget,” says Library Director Bibsi Zuckerbrot. “Now, we very much want the program to continue next year, but in order for this to happen, we need to find about 15,000 NIS from outside sources. We hope this happens – if we close the program it would not just be a loss for the girls involved, but for the entire community.”
For Zuckerbrot, the symbol of the Mentoring Program’s impact is its end-of-year field trip, in which the participating girls get an eye-opening introduction to the world of higher education. On one trip, the participants – whose parents are often uneducated, and none of whom had ever visited a college campus — visited the Gonda Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University. Last year, the girls were treated to an inspiring tour of Hadassah Hospital’s School of Nursing, given by an Ethiopian nursing student. Another end-of-year outing included a tour of Schneider Children’s Hospital at the Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson), where the girls heard a talk by Dr. Jerry Stein about choosing a career in medicine. They were invited to watch an actual surgery in progress (from the visitor’s gallery), and observed a series of diagnostic procedures being performed.
This week, the Program’s activities culminated with a tour of laboratories at the Jerusalem College of Engineering where the girls participated in exciting hands and goggles on experiments.
“By investing in their responsibilities here in the Mentoring Program, the girls learn what a great feeling it is to make a creative contribution to society,” says program co-director Sima Yitzchak. “Hopefully, if we can find a donor to continue the program next year, this circle of young leaders will expand, and have an even greater impact on the Ethiopian community, the city of Bet Shemesh, and all of Israel.”