2 Havered street
Ma'alot
Israel
- Others
The Cochav Hatzafon association aims to empower people with special needs with the skills needed to become economically self sufficient and productive within the work force and encourages them to realize the personal potential inside each of them and to pursue their dreams. Thus, aside from arranging “traditional” employment opportunities for people with disabilities, which mainly include contracted factory work, the association has created unique opportunities for creative and productive employment making decorative items such as domestic products made of ceramics, placemats, wooden frameworks, candles, textile products, wooden furniture and greeting cards and providing skills that can be utilized in the open workforce.
These items are manufactured by people with special needs, at "Something Special" – a network of occupational centers with a different orientation. All the income from the sale of these items is devoted to rehabilitate people with special needs and to their wages.
The Cochav Hatzafon Association has established and operates occupational centers and sheltered employment for people with multiple disabilities (emotional, mental and physical) at three locations in the Western Galilee; in the city of Ma'alot, one on Kibbutz Matzuva and an additional center on Moshav Shomera, situated very close to the northern border fence.
The occupational centers of the Cochav Hatzafon Association operate continually as a one system network that allows for the integration of a wide variety of disabled persons while maintaining social bonding based on the criterion of interpersonal communication. In addition, it enables mobility of persons from one framework to the next according to their wishes and suitability for the group employed at the particular center.