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New Beginnings

“New Beginnings” is a project designed to empower Arab women in three municipalities - Shfar’am, Tamra, and Jisr az-Zarqa. Through weekly meetings, women who married directly after high school and never received any kind of professional training were encouraged to break out of their routines and get to know other women from different denominations (Christian, Muslim, and Druze). They heard lectures on diverse topics and were inspired to think about professional training, studying, volunteering, starting a business, etc.

Project summary

Status:

completed

Students:

Rodaina Shakir Mash’or, MA

Mentorship:

Rachel Levy Hertz, Gender Studies

Impact Fund investment:

NIS 102,750

Ripple effect:

Christian, Muslim, and Druze married women receive career training and life-advancement skills.

Student entrepreneur

Rodina Shakir Mash’or is a non-profit consultant with an MA in Business Administration and an MA in Gender Studies from Bar-Ilan University.

End of year summary

Tamra:

  • We started a group with 15 women. The group had a facilitator who supported the women throughout all meetings. The first part of the program included 12 weekly meetings, each meeting lasting approx. 2 hours.
  • The second part of the program took place from mid-April to June and focused on introducing the participants to potential vocational training in fields that interested the women.
  • Most group participants are women over the age of 30, whose sole focus has been taking care of the home and their families.
  • The reasons why the women chose to join the group are very diverse: One of them joined as a way to get out of a depression following the loss of a family member, another shared that this is an opportunity to influence other women “because I specialize in recycling” (she came to the group with a recycled outfit and a recycled bag and right from the first meeting wanted to show her special recycled items). For one woman, the group was helping her enter the world of work after many years of raising children.
  • The main goal of the project – which has been achieved – was to build a supportive and cohesive women’s circle that looked at how gender roles and expectations affected women’s lives and choices. We also worked intensively around assertiveness and leadership.

Shfar’am:

  • It was difficult to form a group in Shfar’am according to the schedule we set because of the war. In January 2024, we were able to organize a women’s book club, which has been meeting regularly since. Although the book club was not originally part of the project, it still serves to connect the women and empower them on a different level.

Jisr az-Zarqa (The Women's Cleaning and Factory Workers Cooperative):

  • Fifteen of the Cooperative’s employees received a stipend for their participation in the group.
  • Interviews were conducted with all the participants before the group began.
  • The group met each Saturday for four hours and followed the same general guidelines as the Tamra group.
  • As all the participants were employed in the same field and worked for the same company, the initial feeling of the group was different than that in the Tamra group.