Rishon Letzion 3
Tel Aviv
Israel
- Democracy and community development
Mesila – Aid and Information Center for the Foreign Workers and Refugees and their children of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, is an organization whose main purpose is to offer assistance, aid, counseling, advocacy and mediation services to the foreign workers and the refugees, while emphasizing on the children of the community.
Mesila offers an "open door” to the distressed segments of the migrant and refugee
community, as well as a “window” through which municipal leaders and policymakers can
improve their understanding of the needs and the conditions of the foreign worker's
community.At Mesila we strongly believe that our mission as social workers is to empower the community and offer assistance in the means of giving knowledge and developing tools that enable the community to help itself. We are not interested in "doing the job" for the unprivileged, but to turn them into a strong and unified community that will be able to create it's own resources and access to various means, with a strong leadership. Our main purpose, as the only body that provide welfare and social services to this marginalized population, is to offer assistance, aid, counseling, advocacy and mediation services to the foreign workers and the refugees, while emphasizing on strengthening of the local community, by various means: empowerment of groups and leaders within the community, explanation and promoting of various issues (access to resources, health, human rights, employment, care and fostering in early childhood), building and strengthening internal networks of mutual help within the community, assisting in establishing communal educational frames etc. Mesila is not a political organization but an organization that strives to ensure the basic human rights
of all the individuals that stay or ask for shelter in Israel, as a part of our commitment as a developed country and hand in hand with Jewish tradition ("You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:20)
• Practical assistance at the individual level (counseling, referrals, and mediation).
• Improving the living conditions of the children in the foreign worker's community.
• Assistance at a community level (identification and analysis of social issues in order to develop and strength support networks).
• Data collection regarding the foreign worker's community in Tel Aviv and research of the global trend of migrant workers in order to improve Mesila's ability to service its target population.
• Attempting to influence government policy-making on a national level
1. The individual domain: Consultation on a variety of topics provided to about 150 individuals each month. This service offered by the case coordinator and volunteers who are fluent in the individual's native language. Consultations range from emergency intervention in crises to long-term counseling.
2. The community domain: Developing self-help mechanisms and welfare projects, cooperating with inter-community organizations, developing community skills to deal with emergencies and vital safety information, woman empowerment.
3. Preschooler's domain: Improving conditions at the "Mass Babysitting" groups of the foreign community; locating and treating children at risk; mediation and assisting foreign worker's children's integration within public community services (health, education, etc.); family interventions and more. Modification for treatment to children with special needs.
4. Volunteering domain: Recruiting, training and supervising and directing approximately 270 volunteers in variety of domains including: personal coaching, mediation, legal assistant, psycho-social treatment, group workshops, intervention in emergency situations, activities in the kindergartens etc.
5. Public Domain: Activities aimed at heightening awareness of the plight of the foreign worker's community and influencing policy-makers and public officials on a local and national level.