ATD UK invites to an International Forum: ‘Creating Community and Building Knowledge’

ATD UK (www.atd-uk.org) has the great pleasure of welcoming Mirit Sidi and Dr Orna Shemer, friends of ATD Fourth World in Israel, who will talk about The Women’s Courtyard, a brilliant project reaching and engaging with vulnerable women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in Jaffa, a poor area in Tel-Aviv.

Participants will then have a chance to discuss together our own experiences of community outreach and of sharing and building knowledge based on people’s life experience.

Exchange between ATD UK activists and friends from Israel and Scotland will address community development: how to bring people living in poverty in communities together to build understanding and give people a voice.

Our friends from Israel, Mirit Sidi and Dr Orna Shemer, will explain how The Woman’s Courtyard provides a space for the women to speak out, think together and engage with academics and policy-makers.

Mirit Sidi and Leora Kessel founded the Women’s Courtyard in December 2003. Through their profession as social workers they understood how they could help these women. They wanted to create a multicultural, safe, female space offering emotional support, educational activities, vocational services and crisis intervention to disadvantaged young women in the Jaffa area. Jaffa is a historically poor area with about 42 % of the population getting assistance from the Welfare Department, compared to 14% in central Tel Aviv. The need here is great and it is often women and girls who have the hardest time and whose needs are overlooked. Mirit and Leora created a safe, friendly and inviting place where women can just ‘be’. At the Courtyard, the women can get food, clothes, practical advice and help relating to all issues. They are also encouraged to find interests that they like and are assisted with educational programmes.

Where? 
Frimhurst Family House
Guildford Road, Frimley Green, GU16 6NU
When?
Friday 13 June 2014
Tea and coffee from 10:30 am
Meeting starts at 11:00 am and ends at 2:30 pm
Lunch provided.

To whom do I RSVP?
Please RSVP to Tom Croft: 01252 835489 or croftt@atd-uk.org

How can I get there?

Trains from Waterloo and Clapham Junction to Brookwood (on the Alton and Basingstoke lines) – If you are coming from London and wish to come with a group from ATD Fourth World, please contact Hannah Blumhardt for more details: blumhardth@atd-uk.org