First Child Development Center to Serve Arabs and Jews Inaugurated in Nazareth

A new child development center – the first such facility built in cooperation with the North American Jewish community in an Israeli Arab area – was opened at the end of September in the Arab city of Nazareth. The center will serve children birth to age five from its home city, the Jewish city of Upper Nazareth and surrounding communities.

The state-of-the-art facility, inaugurated with much fanfare, is named for the Irwin Green Family, who donated $750,000 to its establishment. The family partnered with their home community – The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit – in the planning and creation of the center, facilitated by JDC-Israel and Ashalim – The Association for Planning and Development of Services for Children and Youth at Risk and their families.

The center will provide both diagnostic services and treatment to children with developmental disabilities or delays, as well as sponsor enrichment activities and provide guidance to parents and young children. Ashalim and JDC-Israel will provide ongoing professional guidance to the center in the future.

The product of a broad and fruitful partnership that also included the Nazareth Fund, St. Vincent French Hospital, the Ministry of Health and the National Insurance Institute, the project included assessing the local needs, adapting the building's design to the unique needs of area residents, and developing appropriate therapeutic services.

Since the idea to create the center crystallized nearly five years ago, the 95-year-old Mr. Green has visited Israel multiple times per year in order to oversee the evolution of a project "that will enable Israeli children to high-quality services and to grow up both physically and emotionally healthy."

Arnon Mantver, Director of JDC-Israel, noted that JDC-Israel's goal is to develop services for Israel's needy populations, among them children-at-risk. He sees great symbolism in the fact that the center was built in an Arab-Israeli city with the goal of serving children from all communities in the region.

This is one of many projects developed by Ashalim and JDC-Israel to assist Israeli Arab children, as well as programs for Israel's Druze and Bedouin populations.

JDC has been involved in welfare activities throughout the country, including in the Arab sector, since Israel's establishment. Eliot Goldstein, JDC-Israel Director of Federation Relations with Jewish communities in the U.S., notes that there has, however, been a trend since the late 1990s toward unique investments in the Arab sector.

Mr. Green told Ha'aretz that investments in the center and other similar projects are being made because there is a growing recognition that "promoting equal rights and the status of the Arabs in Israel is very important to the state as a whole."