AKIM Leadership Thursday 15 September 2011

Thursday morning had us meeting with Batya Krauss, a social worker and parent of a son with disabilities, who is a friend of a friend in the US.  She is pushing for advances here in Israel and is not satisfied with the categorical nature of services here.  Lots of energy and fire.  We need more people like her.  I then got to see my friend Alisa Macht.  Alisa worked for Special Olympics for years as a staff attorney and is here with he husband and kids for a few years.  It was grat to catch up and she also volunteered to help us with our work here.  We will definitely take her up on it.

Next we toured a site, a day program for people with significant disabilities.  There are people who live at home with their families, not people who live outside the family home.  It looked like so many people and programs I saw in Pennsylvania in the 1980's.  Nothing special, though as always loving and caring staff.. The day ended with a frank discussion with the AKIM senior staff about what we saw, and then A lecture by yours truly about the UN Convention and where the field is go ing and the issues and decisions AKIM will need to face and decide.  The new CEO of AKIM, Sigal, is coming to the UD Leadership Institute in January and promised to help move the organization forward.  We got lots of questions after the presentation, some smiles, some daggers, and some people plain curious. 

All in all, a productive trip.  There is an enormous amount of work to do here.  The government's approach to services is not in sync with the UN Convention and, at least at AKIM, much of what they do is far from what they could do.   Friday promises to be interesting as well.