September 25, 2006

(San Francisco, CA) – Program directors from the Netanya Initative, a new employment and job training initiative serving 12,000 Ethiopian Israeli residents in Netanya, the largest such community in Israel, will be visiting San Francisco, September 26-28, 2006. The visitors will include Professor Yossi Tamir, director of Tevet and a leading expert on employment and the Israeli labor market, Yossi Rosen, national director of Reshet Employment Incubators and Ruti David Amir, an Ethiopian Israeli and the national director of Eshet Chayil.

The Netanya Initiative of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties is a new strategic partnership launched in early 2006 as part of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) TevetEmployment Initiative. Tevet, a program that focuses on boosting economic opportunity in the Upper Galil, is one of JDC’s three large-scale initiatives for aiding recovery and rebuilding northern Israel.

The Netanya Initiative is comprised of two major enterprises; Reshet and Eshet Chayil. Reshet is an employment incubator where participants are provided with the concrete tools necessary for obtaining work, reaching a level of job security and achieving economic self-sufficiency. Eshet Chayil (Woman of Valor) seeks to combat the problems that have traditionally kept Ethiopian Israeli women out of the workforce, including cultural barriers, lack of formal education, limited Hebrew language skills and minimal prior work experience. It provides concrete and practical intervention to help them become educated, employable and productive. The program targets women who have been unemployed for a period of years and rely on government welfare payments and unemployment benefits to support themselves and their families.(See attachment for further details on Reshet and Eshet Chayil)

workplace environment that furthers the immigrants’ progress on the job and, more broadly, their integration into Israeli society.

This program has served as an impetus for a city-wide initiative focused on Ethiopian immigrants and all aspects of their integration into Israeli society. At the present time, all the leading professionals Netanya in the areas of health, social welfare, education and employment are participating in a forum to insure better coordination and an adoption of a comprehensive approach in addressing the needs of the city’s immigrant community.  

The Israeli and Overseas Committee of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties works directly in Israel on project that reflect of the vision and values of our Jewish community, including democracy, education, equality of opportunity for all of Israel’s citizens and Jewish pluralism.

The Jewish Community Federation is the central organization for fundraising, planning, outreach and leadership development for Jewish communities in San Francisco, the Peninsula, and Marin and Sonoma counties. In fiscal year 2004-05, the Federation’s annual campaign allocated $16.9 million to some 60 agencies providing social services, educational and cultural programs in the Bay Area, in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere in the world. In fiscal year 2005, the Federation’s Endowment Fund, with assets exceeding $1.05 billion, provided more than $215 million for a variety of grants, seed projects and emergency needs. For more information, call 415.777.0411 or visit www.sfjcf.org.