Background

The City of Lod, located adjacent to Israel's international airport, is one of the most impoverished municipal areas in Israel. Indeed due to a corrupt and bankrupt municipal government, the Interior Ministry designated an external comptroller committee to temporarily replace city management. Lod currently houses 74,584 residents, of whom 26% are considered immigrants. Among these are 2,244 immigrants from Ethiopia.

Most of the Ethiopian community, together with a number of Ethiopians not considered Jewish,lives in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, in which Community Advocacy established its Storefront Advocacy Center. Ramat Eshkol is a neighborhood with poor or non-existent infrastructure, a closed community center, no supplemental educational activities and no enrichment activities. This neighborhood, along with the adjacent "Rakhevet" neighborhood also houses the majority of Lod's Arab population. These two communities live side by side in these disadvantaged areas but have not yet joined to present a common front to work towards improving their situation. Except for meeting at our Storefront Advocacy Center, there is limited interaction between these communities.

The Lod Storefront Advocacy Center opened in November 2006 in order to work together with the residents to ensure their rights and fight for social change. The overall goal of our work in Lod is to strengthen the awareness of the disadvantaged in the Jewish and Arab communities concerning their social rights in order to access and promote their rights and entitlements as an expression of their empowerment as individuals and as a community.

Our Work 

The goals of our work involve protecting the human rights of the residents whose human rights are violated by the authorities, and to actively bridge between the Arab and the Ethiopian communities to empower them to work on common goals through integrated action groups.

The demographic profile of the neighborhoods emphasizes the need to focus on the rights of the child, as there are an unusually high percentage of single-parent families. Many of the Arab families have been torn asunder as the father might be from the PA or from one of the Arab countries, and is not allowed to live in Israel due to the ban on family unification. Many Ethiopian families are torn apart as the male is part of the Falashmura and has not been permitted to come to Israel.

Thus, the topics chosen to encourage activism among the adults concentrate on their desires regarding the children. An overall goal, based on the International Covenant of the Rights of the Child, is the right of each and every child to physical and emotional development, safety, peace, health, equality and freedom. This is the lever which we use to induce the parents to become involved, and this is the topic which is common to all the residents, regardless of background.

A process of bridge building between the Arab and Ethiopian communities is required in order to further common goals. Thus, while our outputs involve furthering these goals, our strategy cannot succeed without forging a community from the different groups of residents. This process includes breaking through the stereotypes, accepting the "other" and realizing that only by acquiring the strength imbued in the group as a whole by linking together, the community action groups will begin to succeed. Their successes, in turn, will strengthen the commitment to working together across their difference. This change in environment will impact on the youth of the neighborhood, who will become influenced by their elders and will thus begin to interact without the need for violence. 

At the storefront, we also work on the rights to housing, health, education, and the right to work, for these disenfranchised families. Today this center records 250 visits per month. Prevalent complaints involve public housing, municipal debts, registration of children in educational facilities, and denial of proper entitlements, especially for the single-mother families. The clients are approximately 67% Arab and 22% Ethiopian. The Storefront never closes until the last client is served. Indeed, many times residents come in to use the facilities, such as the fax, when the Storefront is officially closed, but staff or volunteers might be present.

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