A helping hand
THE Jewish community was last week urged to help refugees in Australia gain work experience.
THE Jewish community was last week urged to help refugees in Australia gain work experience.
Dikla Blum, of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (NSWJBD) non-government relations committee, announced on Tuesday night that the communal roof body was supporting the Global Backyard program.
The initiative aims to help talented refugees who want to pursue further education by establishing scholarships, pathways to individual transformational learning and also income generation.
Speaking at the board’s monthly plenum on Tuesday night during Refugee Week, Blum said: “We identified the difficulty in finding work and gaining experience so we are calling for members of the community that would like to get involved for a number of weeks to contact us and we will match them with refugees that have experience in their industry.”
Blum thanked Refugee Council of Australia’s communications manager Sophie Peer, who also addressed the plenum.“We hope to be able to work within our Jewish community to coordinate and give back to the wider community,” Blum said.
While most of the plenum was dedicated to Refugee Week, NSWJBD chief executive Vic Alhadeff also reported on his trip to America for the AIPAC conference.
He said the increasing Latin-American population in the US could potentially have a negative impact on Israel’s security. “In 1960, there were 900,000 Hispanics in the US or nine per cent of foreign born residents. Today, the number of Hispanics in the US is 55 million, 16 per cent of the nations’s total population,” Alhadeff said.
“The significance of this is that historically, support for Israel has been sharply lacking in some key nations in the Latin American world.”
He said that there had been 122 resolutions against Israel at the United Nations in the past seven years and Brazil and Chile had supported all of them.
“This sector is beginning to make itself heard in the corridors of power in the US, not to mention in business and key NGO sectors. US Jewish leaders have been talking up the Latin American influence in the US body politic for so years now and that issue was driven home during this trip.”
To become involved in the program to help refugees find work experience or employment call the NSWJBD on 9360 1600.
JOSHUA LEVI
NSW Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff
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