يعرض الآن

Before The Morning (Reimagined)-Josh Wilson
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Radio Hayah interviewed Nader abu Amsha from the YMCA Beit Sahour.

Find out about the YMCA's work

عربى

Radio Hayah: Now Nader when was the YMCA started here in Beit Sahour ?

 

The YMCA started a long time ago in Beit Sahour it started in the 20's actually but the rehabilitation program, the YMCA rehabilitation program started in 1989.

Radio Hayah: Now you run rehabilitation programs for disabled children , tell us a little bit more about that .?

Actually we came to work with children of disability after finding they are representing a big percentage of the young people who have been injured and developed trauma during the first Intifada (Arab Upraising) so the first initiative was to work with those who develop trauma because of political conflict,the young boys and girls who get injured, get taken to medical rehab centres and hospitals then return back to their homes with their trauma and phyco-social problems , the idea was to help them reintegrate into the community so by time we discovered that many of them developed disabilities and physical disabilities ,thats why we separated our work into two main directions , the first direction is working with the survivors of political conflict who develop traumas and phyco-social difficulties and the other group is the people with physical disabilities regardless weather it is because of conflict or because of any other reason.

Radio Hayah: How many disabled children do you have coming to the YMCA.?

We are working yearly with an average of 500 children with disability or young people with disability .

Radio Hayah: What projects do you do with them ?

The work is a holistic approach in counselling, actually we are trying to re integrate them into the community we do through assessment for their reality difficulties , problems , hopes and potentials and then we build a rehabilitation plan together with them, after this we try to go through this rehabilitation plan which is based on holistic approach and rehabilitation, I mean by holistic approach we are not offering counselling only or vocational rehabilitation only or whatever, we are trying to find ways to bring people back to normal life, so you find us doing building access facilities in their homes offering medical assitive aid like wheel chairs , crutches or whatever helping in adapting the education places like schools, public used buildings with the cooperation of the community as well as working intensively in bringing people back either to education or to vocation rehabilitation, Education means bringing them back to schools , co-ordinating with the school system , developing the understanding of people with disability amongst the school system like the teachers , head masters and the students about the rights of people with disability to be included, and the right of inclusion of people with disability in schools and in scholastic life,as well as developing the potential of doing changes in the physical environment of the school to be accessible for people with disability , the other part which is in the vocational rehabilitation starts with vocational counselling knowing more about them, about their interests, abilities and we have the unique thing in this country which is the vocational assessment unit, its a series of exercises, you go through it work against time and error and you get very precise knowledge about your abilities and your interests then if you match it with the job requirements this leads to having a very precise and successful design towards your future career and then we take them to vocational training centres and workshops or companies wherever this is relevant to their interests and abilities and we offer them the possibilities to be trained and later on being hired in whatever job they train for.

Radio Hayah: What sort of phycological problems do you see ?

The phycological problems is very … its between deep trauma to phyco social stresses and kind of tension, Deep trauma we find it mainly with those who develop phycological trauma because of political conflict like children ex- detainees, Its important to let you know that Israel is arresting children between 12 and 18 years of age the vast majority of them are accused of throwing stones , the number of people arrested yearly,its growing and these are for the last 5 years it became an average of 1200 children in prison. These children are usually arrested at home, few of them arrested in the streets but they follow others and arrest them at homes, early mornings usually they break through, they shout and wake them up and handcuff them and blindfold them and take them to interrogation which is a very very serious problem and impacting them seriously so they get out with deep trauma, they get out loosing their schools, they get out with no possibilities to return back to normality unless we intervene with them. So we offer counselling and we offer reintegration with the schooling and also we try our best to build hope for them to let them look to the light at the end of the tunnel because they don't see any light they see everything is just about revenge, is just about trauma is just about extreme attitudes which has been developed because of this kind of pain they are going through. These are mainly kids who are coming from poor communities, they have limited opportunities, they have no plan for life after being released from prison , they stay till early morning on TV's and computers they wake in the middle of the day, they have no plan for their life, they want to charge their mobiles, they want to smoke you know, they are having intrusive thoughts as well as a result of their trauma so they are a very easy victim for whatever extreme you can imagine whether its political extremism or social extremism. We believe this is the core of our service, the core of our mission as a YMCA as a Christian organisation living here in order to restore hope thats why we put our main slogan “Restoring hope for better life” we derived it from John 10-10 That I came to give them life and to live it abundantly so this is the core work so its not about vocational training, its not about counselling , its not about education its about restoring hope and bringing more hopeful life for young people rather than being victims to the extremism and victims to the violence and whatever they are having.

Radio Hayah: For the disabled children in particular what would they be doing if they weren't here at the YMCA.?

Actually our work is an outreach work , this centre is a referral centre , its the headquarters for the work but we have 11 teams covering the whole area of the west bank and in each district we are having a team of counsellors social workers and community workers , this place here is a place where we are leading the work and also we are offering the vocational assessment so the kids when they come here they come for the assessment to be assessed in the vocational assessment unit as well as for those who would like to spend some time far from where the trauma took place because there is lots of people who live with severe trauma and its advised by field workers to have these kids here to stay for several days receiving intensive counselling and then sent back and they will follow up the work with them in the outreach.

Radio Hayah: The program is building dignity into their lives isn't it.?

Yes definitely when you are loosing potential for being a member in a community this restores your hope for a better future restores your hope for possibility of being member in your community its a key issue, actually advocacy is one of our components of our holistic approach we do advocacy for the rights of people with disability in the country we do advocacy for the equal rights for people with disability and we believe that and we try to convince everybody that disability is part of the human nature , disability is part of the diversity of the human nature so we are men and women, we are children and old people , we are adults and youth and we are abled and disabled so we believe that this is how we are diverse as a human being its not something exceptional its something existing in each and every community in the world, the community should be open, the community should be accessible the community should develop itself to include everybody including people with disability and including children including everybody, from this point of view we are coming and that is why we believe its about dignity its not about charity its about letting people know that this is their own right to be members in the community, the community should adapt to be more dignified

community for all its citizens including people with disability, thats why we believe we believe that

they have the right for a decent work like any other people, they have the right to decent education everywhere, they have the right to leisure time like others so its not an isolated group should be kept aside and fed and given whatever so this is the exclusion that we are trying to reduce it and trying to create better understanding into the Palestinian community about this issue.

Radio Hayah: Are disabled children accepted well in the community?

Yeah there is lots of moral and emotional acceptance to people with disability but when it comes to actual adaptation actual accessibility actual inclusion there is a big problem , you find when people build homes they don't build it in a way to be friendly and accessible for people with disability, when they are building a bank they are not thinking of this very much actually it was part of our struggle for a long time . Since the beginning of our program we struggled to have this as part of the legislation we are proud as a YMCA to say that we developed the first draft for rights for people with disability in Palestine and we have it as a draft to send it to the Palestinian legislative counsel with the support of all other organisations we manage to have it as rights for people with disability including building access facilities, now by law there is no building should be built for public use unless its accessible for people with disability but the implementation should be done in the same way, thats why we are monitoring, trying to push for that ,trying to put pressure on all the organisations who are not abiding with this law its not only about the private sector but also about the governmental bodies and municipalities .

Radio Hayah: Why do you do what you do ?

We do this as part of our mission what we believe that the YMCA is a Christian based organisation , its a faith based organisation based on Christian values and Christian basic principles and we believe the core value of our faith is love, we love everybody this is how God did it, God loved the whole world and sent his only son to live amongst us to save us to die and resurrect for our salvation so we believe that this is the whole issue about our service, Our service is to care about the community everybody deserves the love of God , everybody deserves our interest because everybody is in the image of God, we are a Christian organisation working in mainly a non christian environment but by doing this by sending this kind of message we are creating the right image about Christianity we are sending a right image about our faith and we accept the diversity of the community we accept that people are coming from different backgrounds different religions, different faith we respect their faith , their culture, their whatever but we send them a message that we love you and you are here because you deserve the love of God and you are our beneficiaries and our colleagues and whatever who are sharing with us this mission in changing life for better because what does God wants us to live ? God wants us to live a decent life not a miserable one ,thats why we are doing all of this.

Radio Hayah: What is your prayer finally for the disabled in the community ?

Our prayer for people with disability , that they might be perceived as normal as others, we call upon God to open eyes of everybody to accept people with disability as normal human being like any other human being and as a type of the diversity of our community and they have always been there forever.

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