MASHAV Lends Expertise to Development

Many of the components of international development are included in the tradition of “Tikkun Olam”, a Jewish imperative that means “repairing the world”. In 1957 Israel’s official overseas development cooperation program, MASHAV, was launched with the aim of sharing with the rest of the developing world the know-how and technologies which provided the basis for Israel’s own rapid development.

What started as a modest program focused on grassroots-level human capacity building at a time when Israel itself was still very much a developing country, has blossomed into an extensive program of cooperation throughout the developing world with the aim of promoting sustainable development and social equality.

MASHAV’S efforts focus on major issues such as food security, dealing with famine, water issues, children at risk, emergency preparedness, managing trauma, empowerment, immigration and HIV/AIDS.

Rather than offering bags of money, or bags of rice, MASHAV focuses its work on long term sustainable aid, sharing Israel’s knowledge– training people to aid themselves. Local people that have been trained by MASHAV then go on to educate others within the community, in fields in which Israel has itself excelled – be it with agricultural advice, medical techniques or community development.

Since 1957, MASHAV has trained some 230,000 course participants from approximately 140 countires in Israel and abroad and has developed dozens of demonstration projects worldwide in fields of Israeli expertise.

Today is World Aids Day, and citizens and leaders across the globe are being called to account not just for good intentions, but for actions to make those promises a reality. What actions has MASHAV taken recently towards the gravely serious and crucial task of eradicating this preventable disease that kills 5,500 people every day?

Last month, under the umbrella of MASHAV, an Israeli medical team visited Kazakhstan to assist children who were infected with the HIV virus.

Israel was among the first countries to offer assistance to the country by sending a medical team, which included head of the AIDS clinic in Sheba hospital, Dr. Itzik Levy. The doctors met with the parents of the many babies and children that they helped, and presented them with ways of treatment and how to deal with this new situation.

The Kazakhstan government thanked Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for Israel’s assistance. “Beyond the humanitarian and moral values that Israel has shown, this step is another step forward towards the friendship between states and nations. We will never forget the compassion, generosity and friendship that you have shown and given us” the letter mentioned.

The children’s parents expressed their gratitude by sending thank you letters to Israel’s embassy. Soon an international AIDS center would be built in Kazakhstan and Israel has offered its help in guidance and training.

In another AIDS related project, Israeli physicians who gained experience treating Ethiopian immigrants living with HIV/AIDS in Israel are sharing techniques for treating HIV/AIDS with Ethiopian physicians.

About half of HIV-positive people in Israel are of Ethiopian descent, and health care workers treating HIV-positive Ethiopians in Israel “have gained expertise in instructing those from often poor and uneducated backgrounds in adhering to a strict regimen of treatment,” according to Reuters

As part of the program — funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and held at Hadassah Hospital in Israel — a team of pharmacists, nutritionists, social workers and case managers tracks the “psychological and social impact” of HIV/AIDS on Ethiopians to learn what might prevent or deter them from taking their antiretroviral drugs, the AP/International Herald Tribune reports.

“The type of experience doctors get here cannot be given in Ethiopia,” Shlomo Maayan, head of the AIDS center at Hadassah Hospital and coordinator of the clinic, said, adding, “We tell the experience of treating patients for the last five, sometimes 10 years, including all the ramifications and all the complications” (AP/International Herald Tribune, 10/26).

Other initiatives launched include;

Workshops for Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian health professionals that were conducted in Jerusalem.

A teenagers’ group, established with the professional guidance of the Jerusalem AIDS Project that aims to establish a peer AIDS education project where high school students take AIDS messages into the community at large and to youth in particular.

The mobilization of people around the world to ring 100,000 bells in global solidarity of World Aids Day 2005, organized by the Jerusalem Aids Project Initiative.

Sadly, statistics that highlight the fact that the epidemic continues to spread in every corner of the world show that there is so much more that needs urgently to be done to stop AIDS. By now more than 65 million people have been infected with HIV and well over 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

A large aspect of the work that needs to be done relates to education, a guiding principle of MASHAV. Education and awareness can help stem the spread of the disease in the developing world, and education and awareness in the Western world can both stem Western spread of the disease, as well as encourage citizens to pressure their leadership into supplying the much needed funds to help STOP AIDS AND KEEP THE PROMISE.

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