By BATSHEVA POMERANTZ , In Jerusalem, Jerusalem Post
26/02/2010 17:05

After nearly 20 years in Talbiyeh, the AACI is moving to a new, bigger home.

Members of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) have been benefiting from its services and programs for 57 years. Now, members and volunteers alike are pleased with this week’s move from Talbiyeh to new premises in Talpiot.

“The move to Talpiot is a change for the better. People are excited about it, since there will be more room,” says veteran member Yehuda Brumberg of Ramot, who made aliya from New York in 1969. He was assisted by AACI in his first years through its counseling services where he learned about rights and laws and the changing of status. He also received a loan from AACI.

“On occasion I’ve attended their programs like concerts and lectures, classes in Tai Chi and Shakespeare. AACI programs are on such a high level that other English speakers are attracted, not only North Americans.”

Brumberg worked for the police for 21 years as a counselor. “After I left the police, I saw the need for a support group for single parents. I’ve been facilitating this group for five years as a volunteer. The parents who participate have gone through a hard time usually following divorce, and sometimes widowhood.”

As a major facilitator for more than 50 years in the absorption of thousands of English speakers in Israel, the AACI’s move to its new premises will further ease access to its many services and enhance the scope of its programs to members and visitors to its spacious quarters.

AACI’s new home is on the fourth floor of the building at the corner of Rehov Pierre Koenig 37 and Poalei Tzedek, opposite the Hadar Mall. The office is accessible by elevator, and parking is available around the building, both free and metered.

“We chose to relocate to Talpiot, as this area is easily accessible by car or public transportation,” says David London, executive director of the AACI. It is near Arnona, Baka and Katamon, neighborhoods with many English-speaking residents, and not far from the tunnels road from Gush Etzion communities, which have many English speakers.

“In addition to being a popular commercial center, Talpiot has also become a center for nonprofit organizations,” says London. An AACI neighbor in the building is El Halev (for women’s empowerment). It is also near the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Melabev’s new center for English-speaking senior citizens and the Israel Free Loan Society.

AACI’s national headquarters and the local Jerusalem branch have merged into one working space, “making work more efficient and saving costs, too,” according to London. “Plans to move have been under way for many years when it was evident that the Talbiyeh headquarters located in a residential area were far too compact for the many AACI activities.”

The new offices, designed by architect David Kupietzky, are spread out on 1,300 square meters. “Building contractor Shai Kassula insisted on top quality of all aspects of the building,” says London. “In line with AACI members’ involvement in environmental issues, the construction materials are environmentally friendly.”

A large reception area greets the visitor at the entrance. In adjoining offices, counselors will assist members with updated information about living in Israel. As the largest resource center for English speakers in Israel, AACI assists members of any immigrant status, be they new and veteran olim, returning residents or tourists.

“I feel that I’m part of an amazing outreach program  that provides information, counseling and interesting programs,” says Diane Greenberg, who volunteers regularly at the front desk. Coming to Israel from England as a young adult in 1967, she became a member in 2006. “At the front desk, I help people with information that I know. If not, I refer them to counselors with more professional knowledge. I meet people of all ages from many English-speaking countries.”

In a separate niche, job seekers have access to computer stations linked to job resources. The UJIA immigrant association for olim from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia also has an office on the premises.

A sound system will quietly broadcast live from the studio of the Rusty Mike Radio located at AACI. Rusty Mike Radio is an Internet radio station for the English-speaking community in Israel and abroad.

The AACI-Jerusalem branch and the four other AACI branches in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Haifa and Beersheba are known for their many cultural and social programs. The new Jerusalem facilities will enable AACI to greatly expand these activities. Its large hall can seat approximately 200 people or can be divided into three separate program rooms. In addition, another multipurpose room and a smaller meeting room are available.

“Now in its new premises, the AACI will have a spacious area for its activities in Talpiot – a popular area,” says Elisheva Lahav. She made aliya from New Jersey in 1971. “I was an AACI member on and off from the beginning and rejoined 15 years ago,”she says.

The extra space of the new premises will enable such programs as art exhibitions, children’s activities, movies and theater productions. “This area can be used for small productions or can be rented out for small events,” says London. When people attend cultural events in the evening, they will circumvent the office area by going around a long veranda lined with tables and chairs.

An outcome of the move to the larger premises in Talpiot will be AACI’s partnership with the AMIT library, which is moving its books from its smaller quarters in Talpiot. The merged AMIT-AACI library means more space for thousands of English books of various genres. 

In a separate room, members will find the AACI Mary & Ben Cohen Library for the Visually Impaired and Homebound for English speakers. The library has a large selection of English-language books on audiotape, CDs, journals, and large-print books.

A series of opening ceremonies in March, open to the public, will host well-known members of the English-speaking community in Israel. At the grand opening event on March 7, Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz and former columnist Saul Singer, co-author of Start-Up Nation, are scheduled to speak. On March 16, recently appointed High Court Justice Neal Hendel, originally from the US, will speak in honor of the opening.

On March 17, at the official naming of the building, the Israel Opera will perform. The new premises, officially dedicated in honor of Dr. Max and Gianna Glassman, will be called the AACI Dr. Max and Gianna Glassman Family Center.

To mark the move to its new home, a wide array of mainly free programming for the entire family will be offered to members and non-members from Jerusalem and elsewhere from March 7 to 20. Among them are parent and children workshops, lectures on insurance and health, fitness classes, concerts, open mike night, and a Meet the Author series.

The AACI and the Jerusalem Municipality Absorption Authority recently published Avnei Yerushalaim, a guide to living in Jerusalem. It was sent to AACI members in Jerusalem, as well as to emissaries in all English-speaking countries. Mayor Nir Barkat will take it with him on trips overseas to publicize the city. The booklet provides information on employment, education, mortgages, health care and culture in Jerusalem. In addition, nearly 40 neighborhoods are profiled, with e-mail addresses of volunteer representatives.

“Although the former building in Talbiyeh is a historical building with atmosphere,” says Greenberg, “we were restricted in our activities. The new place will have more room and is designed to meet our needs. Talpiot is in the heart of things.”

AACI reopened in its new home in Talpiot at the corner of Rehov Pierre Koenig 37 and Poalei Tzedek on February 23. The phone number remains the same: 566-1181.

 

 

By Raphael Ahren, Ha’aretz February 26, 2010

 

What started in 1973 with a $300 donation by an American-Israeli family whose son fell in the Yom Kippur War has quietly turned into a multimillion-dollar scholarship fund, giving NIS 180,000 annually to underprivileged children in Jerusalem. The Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, which administers the fund, kept a low profile about the project for more than 35 years, but recently decided it was time to get it recognition.

On March 14, amid celebrations for AACI's new national headquarters in Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat will honor the group at a reception in his office. During the event, AACI leaders will present the mayor with a symbolic check of $2 million - equivalent to the amount the organization has donated to the city's schoolchildren over the years.

"AACI and the municipality are integral partners, and the mayor is extremely appreciative of the millions of shekels AACI has invested in the city's children," Stephan Miller, Barkat's U.S.-born foreign media spokesman, told Anglo File this week.

"The mayor was quite surprised when he heard about this," said Asa Cohen, a retired finance professional who chairs the fund. "Part of the original intent was to do it quietly, which is very nice, but at the same time, when you give $2 million to something there is a reasonable amount of recognition that should be given."

Cohen, who five years ago moved to Jerusalem from upstate New York, said his board also decided to come out of the woodwork so that the children benefiting from the donations knew who their beneficiaries are and would be able to thank them.

The Jerusalem Scholarship Fund was established by the Sirota family from Long Island, New York, in memory of their son Nahum, according to Bernard Barnet, who ran the fund together with Chana and Mike Bargtiel until Cohen took over last year. After Nahum was killed in action, his parents gave AACI $300 to "do something to help remember his name and good deeds," Cohen said, adding they gave a broad guideline of ideally dealing with children.

Originally, the Sirotas intended to financially assist either children or siblings of fallen IDF soldiers or needy children in the community, explained Cohen, who will become AACI's acting national president after the incumbent, Debbie Milgram, steps down in April. Over the years, he added, AACI volunteers worked quietly to solicit more donations for the fund - most of which came from the American Friends of AACI but also from local members - leading to the endowment's creation. Cohen refused to disclose its size, but said it is "safe to say that it's a multimillion dollar" amount.

In recent years the focus of the fund changed and currently NIS 180,000 - generated by the endowment fund - is handed over to the municipality's education department at the beginning of each calendar year. The city uses the sum to help cover cultural activities for needy school children who otherwise couldn't afford to join their classmates.

The AACI's Scholarship Fund is a separate nonprofit organization whose bylaws prevent the money from being used for anything but its declared goal of providing scholarships to young Jerusalemites. Indeed, AACI kept quiet about the fund for so long partially in order to prevent any sort of confusion or competition between fundraising efforts for the fund and for AACI's daily operations, Barnet and Cohen indicated.

Some AACI members expressed the wish that more funds be redirected toward daily programming in light of budgetary problems that led to the firing of staffers and reduction of staff hours in several offices. Like the scholarship fund, a separate building endowment fund has a strictly defined mandate.

"It's logical and wise that the people who created these separate funds built in safeguards to make sure the money goes to its dedicated goal," said Ilan Haran, a New York-born immigrant in Be'er Sheva. "Still, the organization needs money. It's painful that the money [placed in endowment funds] can't go elsewhere."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Jerusalem Post. March 3, 2010

 

ONE OF the most successful English-speaking groups in the Coastal Plain is ESRA, the English Speaking Residents Association, whose volunteers are spread out across Herzliya, Ra’anana, Kfar Saba, Kfar Shmaryahu, Ramat Hasharon, Tel Aviv and beyond. For some strange reason, ESRA never caught on in Jerusalem, where native English speakers abound. However the Jerusalem Branch of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) aims to more than fill the void.

This was not as feasible in its previous premises, where the rooms were few and small and not particularly conducive to numerous organizational activities at the same time. The new premises in the Talpiot Industrial Zone are more accessible by public transportation, surrounded by shops and restaurants and, most important, incredibly spacious compared to what AACI members had to contend with before.

One of the new additions is a large culture and entertainment hall with built-in spotlights and stage that will be used for plays, concerts, opera and art displays. But even more important than the many services, programs and opportunities for volunteerism that AACI provides is the personal telephone service. “You have no idea how many people tell us how happy they are to hear a human voice,” says AACI executive director David London.

Although AACI is by no means the first not-for-profit organization to opt for the Talpiot Industrial Zone, it did not move there as part of a herd mentality. It looked at other areas such as Givat Shaul where rates are much cheaper, but opted for Talpiot because Givat Shaul tends to close down at night, whereas Talpiot, with its numerous restaurants, night clubs, movie theaters and banquet halls, continues to buzz, and many of the shops stay open till quite late. It is also far more developed than Givat Shaul, and further development is taking place.

Also the property that AACI acquired lent itself to the organization’s various needs and enabled the expansion of activities. For instance there is now a library, with a good selection of books, and a media library and cinema club are about to be launched. In the good old days, AACI received significant funding from the Jewish Agency and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, but over time money grew tighter and the funding waned to a mere trickle. To overcome that problem, AACI has designated some 500 sq.m. of space to be rented out to nonprofit organizations, which means that Talpiot will become the headquarters for Jerusalem-based philanthropic, community development and social welfare organizations.

The Jerusalem Foundation was one of the first organizations to establish headquarters in the area and was followed by several others. One of the many advantages of the new premises is that they are located on the top floor of a factory building which means a balcony most of the way around. The balcony will be furnished with seats and tables for informal gatherings as well as for the grand opening ceremony on Tuesday, March 16, when Dr. Max and Gianna Glassman of Toronto, AACI’s partners in their new venture, will be back in Jerusalem to attend the festivities and have the AACI center named in their honor.

By the way, one doesn’t have to be an American or a Canadian to join AACI. Membership is a good investment because it carries with it discounts at various restaurants, office supply stores, theater productions, trips in the country and abroad and even bank fees.


 

 

Facebook and other social networks connect kids online. But a new form of social networking takes connecting a step further -- to face-to-face meet-ups. New programs called social mapping applications use geographic information to connect people to specific places, as well as to each other. You may have heard of some of the most popular ones:

Loopt, foursquare, and Gowalla. Once you join up, these applications track every movement you make.

 

And that's what makes social mapping a no-go for kids and teens. These programs bring up two big issues: safety and privacy. Since they follow your location, they expose your kid's whereabouts to anyone they "friend" -- or, in some cases, to any other user of the program. Also, advertisers are already using social mapping to target users with ads and incentives to visit their businesses (most of which are bars and restaurants).

 

Foursquare is probably the most popular of these programs. Here's how it works: When you sign up, you import contacts from other programs like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail. Using foursquare's mobile website or its smartphone app, you "check in" -- send a message saying where you are and what you're doing -- and the program alerts your friends to tell them where they can find you. (Foursquare does allows you to hide your location, so you can check in without revealing it.) Foursquare uses a gaming motif, which makes it especially appealing for kids: A recent deal between Bravo and foursquare created a kind of giant treasure hunt where users are required to visit certain places and collect virtual badges.

 

Gowalla works very much the same way as foursquare, with a gaming aspect that rewards people for visiting certain places and doing interesting things (including, in foursquare's case, "staying out late on a school night"). Unlike foursquare's more finely customizable privacy settings, Gowalla's privacy settings are either on or off -- allowing people to view you or not. But Gowalla retains certain features that are publicly available even if you've checked "off." For example, if you recommend something, your recommendation appears under your user name.

 

Another popular program in this category, Loopt, is currently only available as a downloadable app with phones using GPS.  It's also geared more for singles looking for relationships -- the personal profile asks you to check boxes indicating your relationship status and what type of relationship you're looking for. Like Facebook, Loopt gives its users the ability to send messages to friends, and while its ability to connect people face-to-face is highly targeted, it does offer fairly customizable privacy settings, including the ability to hide your location and block people.

 

What Parents Need to Know

 

1. These programs aren't for your kids. Ignore the "ratings" you may see online. The apps must be downloaded, and even though they're free, you'll get a receipt for it, so you'll know whether it's been installed. Either way, check your child's phone for these apps. You need to know what they're doing.

 

2. If you think it's OK for your kid to use one of these apps, then you must make sure that their privacy settings are set to the strictest options (as in, designated "friends only). That said, there are no guarantees that your child will be 100% protected from strangers or unwanted advertisers.

 

3. Since the programs allow users to post directly to Facebook or Twitter from any location, questions of safety and responsible behavior must be addressed. You don't want someone telling everyone about a party at someone else's house.

 

4. Finally, don't our kids have enough ads in their lives? These programs have the ability to send highly targeted ads -- to your kids' favorite store at the mall, for example. Constant advertising has a tendency to give people the "gimmes." Reinforce the fact that they can use the word "no."