KEEP

Kol HaNeshama's English Enrichment program

One of the initiatives of Kol Haneshama is an English teaching project for underprivileged children from the neighborhood. The goal of the program is to provide a service to the broader community, that we are a part of – meeting a real need and using skills readily available to us as immigrants from English speaking countries. 

We teach English in an informal, fun, personalized way that follows the school curriculum and also encourages a positive self image. This is KEEP's 14th year, and we are proud of our achievements.

Children come to us from three local sources: a battered women's shelter, some welfare offices, and from local schools. The children from the schools are referred by the English coordinators who know both who is failing in English and who comes from a struggling family. We make them all feel welcome.

This year, when I was doing the ring around to the list of potential candidates that I had been sent by social workers, all the mothers knew about KEEP. One of them said to me, "My daughter brought home the note from school and it said that the lessons are for free and I thought it must not be for real. Now that I understand that it is happening through Kol HaNeshama, now I understand that it can be true. I know you do such good things there. Bravo to you."

50% of the children coming to KEEP this year have had such disrupted schooling that they have not even acquired the English alphabet. That's tough. We are adapting every session and trying to create whole group activities for the openings and closings of the sessions that will alienate nobody, not even the kids who do not understand a word. So far, with good humor, repetition, translation, and a great deal of pantomime, it is going well.

 Volunteers at KEEP are always great people. They are mostly young Anglos on a year of study in Israel, willing to make a year-long commitment to working with children who are not just simple, happy, little people. These volunteers, in addition to their studies and exams, give of their time, talent and tolerance to create a great educational and emotionally supportive program week in, week out.

Without English, you can't graduate from school with a diploma. We are helping to make those graduations a real possibility on a weekly basis by virtue of a great deal of cooperation and good will. At KEEP, we are making a difference, albeit a tiny one, but a real one nevertheless.
 
Helen Gottstein
KEEP Coordinator