שתיל - שירותי תמיכה וייעוץ לקידום שינוי חברתי

 “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 23:9.

It was exactly two years ago on Holocaust Remembrance Day that Elisheva Milikowsky accompanied 24-year-old Nuger, a refugee from southern Sudan to Be'er Sheva's central bus station after she had found him work in Eilat. Nuger had escaped his village during an attack, wandered in Sudan for a year and spent months in an Egyptian jail. He headed for Israel because it was a Western, democratic country he could get to on foot.   

 "He was in a strange country, alone, completely helpless; he had absolutely nothing," Milikowsky recalls. "He knew no one except me. I got home just at dark when Holocaust Remembrance Day was beginning and I felt so strongly that this just couldn't be."  

With SHATIL's help, the young woman turned her activism and angst into an organization that has been helping refugees for the past two years. Together with Assaf Milo, a young Isareli who worked with Darfur refugees in Chad, she formed Asaf, the Aid Organization for Refugees ad Asylum Seekers.    

At 24, she had been one of a group of Ben Gurion University of the Negev social work students who had decided to help African refugees in Israel. Like many young Israelis, both secular and religious, they take to heart Judaism's injunction that we feel compassion for and help the stranger in our midst. (The phrase, "You were strangers in the land of Egypt," appears four times in the Torah.) 

Asaf provides refugees with individual psycho-social aid, does community work with refugees' grassroots organizations and leaders, including a leadership development course with SHATIL; and, together with six other refugee organizations that comprise the Refugee Rights Forum, advocate for the formulation of a comprehensive government policy. (Israel currently has no clear policy regarding refugees. As the daily Yediot Achronot put it this week: "Israel has a double policy: It doesn't expel them but it gives them a clear message: It doesn't want them.") 

Over the past two years, SHATIL has provided guidance to several refugee organizations included the Sons of Darfur, the Refugee Rights Forum and the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC.)  

Milikowky's initial social work school project has changed her life. She now works as a staff person at Asaf and says her world view has changed after dealing daily with suffering, racism and indifference. 

"SHATIL was there from the beginning," says Milikowsky. "They helped us get through a chaotic time of mass influxes as well as arrests and sudden releases from jail; having to suddenly find places to sleep for 1,000 refugees…It was hard to write a work plan amidst such chaos. Most of us work from our guts and SHATIL helped us become professional. Today we are an organization with roles, goals, a budget and a staff. We succeeded in creating something and much of it is to SHATIL's credit."