Foreword
Until the 1980s, the Jewish communities of Ethiopia had been almost isolated from
Jews elsewhere for some 2,000 years. Like their rural Christian neighbours, their
economy was based on subsistence agriculture, while the services available to them
were few and far between. From the late 1970s, tens of thousands of them found their
way to Israel – their ‘Promised Land’ – suffering many privations on the way. And once
in Israel, they found that they were expected to adjust to a society and way of life that
was entirely different from anything that they had previously experienced.
Culture shock existed for the new arrivals as well as the receiving society. While there
were numerous attempts to assist the newcomers in adjusting to their new homeland,
there were misunderstandings on all sides. Many of the new citizens found themselves
in the town of Beer-Sheva, and this report traces the progress of one of the
programmes that was established to work specifically with young children and parents
from the community.
As a general rule, children are able to adjust to new conditions far more easily than
adults do. They learn a new language more quickly; by mixing with peers, they pick up
behavioural norms; and by participating in educational settings, they see and learn how
organisations work – opportunities that their parents do not always have. At the same
time, the influence of the home is at least as important for children as the influence of
school and the street. Based on the fact that parents are key in terms of children’s
socialisation, and the fact that the children needed to be introduced to the education
system in Israel, the Parents Cooperative Kindergarten was established, a facility that
toddlers attended daily, to which parents (almost only mothers) came on a rota basis.
The objective of the study reported on in this publication was to find out whether the
positive influence of the Parents Cooperative Kindergarten, which appeared to be
obvious at the time children were enrolled in the programme and immediately after,
was still evident 10 years later. The results are quite striking. Despite small sample sizes
and the difficulties of interviewing members of this community (who have been ‘overresearched’
for many years), there can be no doubt that participation in the Parents
Cooperative Kindergarten had a profound influence on the lives of the 36 children who
were traced. This finding is based on interviews with the children themselves, their
parents, and their teachers, and it is further supported by comparison with children of
similar ages from the same communities who did not participate in such a programme.
One of the objectives of the programme was to prepare children to participate in Israeli
culture and education on an equal footing with other Israeli children. In short, what
Working with puzzles, photo: ALMAYA
the study tells us is that the children who were in the Parents Cooperative Kindergarten
have very definitely moved towards the norm in terms of behaviour and performance
for children of the same age in Israel. The differences between the programme and the
comparison groups are manifest in such areas as their ability to organise themselves
and their activities, showing initiative, expressing emotions and their attitudes towards
school, learning and their own community.
Israel is one of the countries of the world where people from many different cultures
and backgrounds are living their lives in a shared system. For new arrivals especially,
this can mean a whole new way of life and the need to adapt to different norms and
values. In such circumstances it is often the children who are torn between competing,
and even conflicting, values. In view of the major differences between what they found
in their new homes and what they had left behind, this is particularly the case for the
families of Ethiopian origin. The older generations have lost their close communities,
as well as their traditional livelihoods. The younger generations have their own
preoccupations – how to be part of this very different society while still retaining the
distinct identity that has been handed down over many centuries.
It seems that the experience of the Parents Cooperative Kindergarten has helped to
give participating children a range of tools that are helping them to fit better into
Israeli society, while at the same time, preserving their connection with their
community, which they see as a support. The children in this study have a distinct
sense of self and can be said to have shifted along the axis from community towards
individualism. This has made them more individualistic than their peers in the
comparison group, while they remain less individualistic than their Israeli peers who
are not of Ethiopian origin.
The mothers who participated in the Kindergarten on a rota basis gained insights into
the Israeli education system and its approach to organisation and schedules; they
learned different methods of disciplining their children; they saw that children may
make individual choices without disrupting the entire group. This appears to have
positively affected the adjustment of whole families to their new society.
Overall, we can say that children and parents who were part of the Parents Cooperative
Kindergarten are not just living within Israeli society, they have a real sense of
belonging to it.
The tracer studies
The early childhood interventions supported by the Foundation are action projects that
are implemented by locally based partners in ‘the field’. Their objectives are concerned
with developing and improving the lives of children and their families and
communities in the here and now, based on the hypothesis that this will lay the
foundation for improved opportunities in the future. These projects have not been
conceived or implemented as research studies in which children/families have been
randomly assigned to ‘treatment’ or ‘control’ groups, and they have not usually been
subjected to tests or other research instruments.
Evidence exists on the longer-term effects of early childhood interventions, much of it
coming from longitudinal studies that have been implemented as research projects in
industrialised countries. The outcomes are mixed, although usually fairly positive.
Other evidence, mostly anecdotal, is available from early childhood projects such as
those supported by the Foundation, and again, this is mostly positive.
After more than 30 years of support for field projects, the Foundation decided in 1998
to commission a number of studies that would trace former participants of projects to
find out how they were faring a minimum of five years after they had left the
programme. Although evaluation has been a major element in early childhood
programmes supported by the Foundation, we have never, until now, gone back to find
out how people are doing a number of years later.
Other similar studies are taking place, or have been completed, in countries as widely
spread as Jamaica and Kenya, Ireland, the USA, Botswana, Colombia, Trinidad and
Honduras. Each of the programmes studied is different in its target group, in its
context, and in its strategies. This means that the methods used to trace former
participants and discover their current status are almost as varied as the original
programmes. In the studies that we have commissioned, we are emphasising an
anthropological and qualitative approach that uses small samples of former
participants, matching them, where possible, with individuals/families that share
similar characteristics for the purpose of comparison.
This present study took a wholly qualitative approach. Specifically, the data from the
young respondents were based entirely on their responses to three open questions,
