Everything’s Possible, with a Double Benefit

Reading time: 4 Min.

Everyone benefits from the collaboration with the residents of the Beit Ekstein Carmel Home – residents who come as volunteers and receive both rehabilitative employment and the opportunity to be on the giving side, the Park staff that is driven by work with meaning, and nature, of course.

Tu Bishvat events at Ein Tzur' Ramat Hanadiv

The excitement surrounding the Tu Bishvat events at Ramat Hanadiv, to which our special volunteers from the Beit Ekstein Carmel Home were invited, was felt very strongly at the meeting, as it spread across the faces of the participants and deeply touched everyone’s hearts. Collaborations always make us happy, particularly when they are special and give extra meaning to all partners. This perfectly describes the initiative of Ramat Hanadiv with the residents of the Beit Ekstein Carmel Home in Binyamina. Once a week 6-8 adult residents come here, accompanied by their professional staff and pre-army volunteers for two hours of volunteer work guided by the staff of the park and led by Mahfouz Alkhatib, a ranger in the Nature Park. The current collaboration began in the summer of 2023, renewing a long-standing relationship between the two organisations. The volunteer residents, who have various disabilities, come to Ein Zur and work in jobs tailored to their situation and abilities, such as raking, cleaning the water channels, collecting carob pods and more.

During the Tu Bishvat events, with the participation of all the employees of Ramat Hanadiv, in which we also celebrated 25 years of Mahfouz working at Ramat Hanadiv – they took part in planting trees in the orchard above the spring. In the near future, we plan to integrate them in additional tasks such as watering, weeding, removing stones and more.

Hila Alter, Volunteer Coordinator at Ramat Hanadiv, notes that the routine tasks change in coordination with the therapeutic staff and the park staff: ‘They’re already familiar with some of the work, so the idea is to diversify and challenge them again with other tasks.’

The volunteer residents, who have various disabilities, come to Ein Zur and work in jobs tailored to their situation and abilities

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Sarit Cohen Haham, personal programme coordinator at the Carmel Home, stresses that each resident has their own tailored work program. ‘Going out to volunteer at Ramat Hanadiv Park affords our residents individually tailored personal development and employment guidance for each one of them according to their abilities’, she says. But the great beauty is in their role reversal to the volunteering, giving side, or in Sarit’s words, ‘Being part of a project like this allows the residents of Carmel Home to be on the side that gives to the environment and community, in contrast to the prevailing opinion in society that people with special needs always need to be on the receiving end’.

We must understand that for the residents, going out to work is not trivial. Within the Carmel Home, in-depth preparations were carried out by Sarit and Marva Mari, Director of the Morning Employment Centre, with the residents who go out to volunteer. This preparation included, among other things, preparing them for encounters with different groups of people, problem solving, rules of behaviour in nature, safety rules at work and more. Another important aspect is maintaining continuity even when external conditions such as weather or war conditions make it difficult to run the activity. ‘When it rains, for example, we’ll take them to the sheep and goat pen or we’ll organize a different activity’, explains Hila. ‘Continuity and persistence are important to us so that it doesn’t dissolve’, adds Tzach Glasser, Director of the Nature Park.

Strengthening the connection between Ein Zur and the Carmel Home

It all began when Tzach was still the shepherd at Ramat Hanadiv, wandering around the park every day. When he reached Ein Zur, adjacent to Beit Ekstein, he often thought how logical it would be for the residents of the home, who live so close to the spring, to be integrated into the local activities: ‘I thought that connecting the two places is only natural and I felt that collaboration would do good both to them and to my staff. This is fulfilling work. When I approached the home, they took it with both hands’.

Despite the deliberation and difficulties involved in a project like this Sarit was determined from the beginning: ‘In my first meeting with Tzach I noticed the hesitation and concerns, but it was clear to me that from the moment the door opened, the only option was for the project to succeed’. Hila relates that the beginning was accompanied by concerns and worries but also a great desire for success, and today it is already clear that the effort affords everyone with rehabilitation and meaning in so many ways.

Being part of a project like this allows the residents of Carmel Home to be on the side that gives to the environment and community, in contrast to the prevailing opinion in society that people with special needs always need to be on the receiving end

Mahfouz and the residents of the Beit Ekstein Carmel Home

Mahfouz, who worked with the home’s residents in the past, relates that in addition to tailoring the physical work to take into account their disabilities, the activities also include tailored explanations, for example, on the spring and the carob tree as resources that the wildlife and goat herd feed on. ‘Whatever happens I never pass up on our Thursday meetings. I’m connected to those residents’, he says excitedly. At the Tu Bishvat events, he relates that they hugged him and that he approached them even before he approached his own family, which was also present at the event.

‘The meetings with the park staff and the warm connection that’s developed with Mahfouz are extraordinary examples of accepting the other’, emphasises Sarit.

The main event of Tu Bishvat

The activity with the home’s residents was gradually exposed to the staff of Ramat Hanadiv: ‘From week to week the residents and their guiding staff gained confidence at the meetings and we generated confidence together with them’, relates Hila. ‘We waited for a suitable opportunity to create a joint meeting and then Tu Bishvat arrived… all the conditions were ripe: familiarity, a planting activity in the orchard by the spring, which is the residents’ permanent volunteering location – everything worked out, only the weather was bad. After a few postponements because of the rain, the cold and the mud, we managed to hold the event, which was put together so as to facilitate the interaction and give the residents their role as equals in the activity’.

In this successful event, almond, pomegranate, fig, mulberry and Judas-trees, which were brought from ancient orchards in the north of the country, were planted in the orchard above the spring, as part of its restoration. These trees are part of an ongoing programme at Ramat Hanadiv to restore traditional heritage landscapes, which were characteristic of the region about 100-200 years ago, but disappeared following the agricultural revolution.