The integration into the workplace of wheelchair-bound disabled people - that’s the declared aim of the Shai Society - Children’s Rehabilitation. The non-profit organization these days also supports adults in wheelchairs, and helps them find work. Various businesses around Israel have rallied to the effort, contributing both financially and in taking on the disabled people as employees.
Adv. Aviezer Grauer has been chairman of the Shai Society for nineteen years. He began as a counselor in the Society, which started out by giving individual help to children suffering from motor related physical disabilities, and gradually broadened its activities to include job placement. The main branch of the “House of Wheels” (“Beit Hagalgalim”), as the Society is known, is in Herzliya Pituah. Grauer says the Society will soon build a new headquarters, where the main branch and the national management of the project will be located. The Herzliya municipality will apparently allocate the project a plot of land.
Behind the Shai Society is a group of founders from the Shwartz, Grauer, and Schimmel families. The management committee is made up of former counselors who are prepared to contribute their time to the running of the project.
The Society was set up in 1980 by the late Miriam Shwartz, the idea being to give respite to parents of disabled children at weekends. Adv. Grauer: “Volunteer students spend their weekends with 12-15 participants. In addition, activities take place during the week, such as the publication of a newspaper, and sailing, and the disabled youngsters also come to summer camps supervised by the students. This is almost the only opportunity the parents have of taking a vacation themselves.”
The aid activity gradually developed and there are now activities for graduates of the Society too. Grauer: “The project’s main asset is the volunteers, usually students, who volunteer for about four years. In 1980, there were 20 disabled participants. Now we have more than 200 in four branches around the country.”
As part of the support it extends to adult disabled, the Society has begun providing assistance in finding jobs. Among the businesses that have joined the scheme are Check Point, which employs a few disabled workers, and NICE Systems, which employs two people in wheelchairs as software inspectors. Grauer; “We intend to set up a forum of people involved in human resources in various companies to promote the integration of disabled people in the workplace. We began with a few individual cases of members in different companies. Now, we are exploring the employment potential of every participant 18 years old or older. We intend to provide training, with the companies themselves contributing by offering work experience.”
Grauer says that a joint steering committee has been set up with the National Insurance institute and the Ministry of Welfare and Labor Affairs. “We have all the files, and we are examining the history of each candidate. The psychologist Dr. Daria Yavnieli examines the candidates. She has developed a special approach based on a structured series of interviews. The conclusions of the Society’s team are presented to the steering committee. The Ministry of Welfare and Labor Affairs and the National Insurance Institute are prepared to provide financial and professional backing in training the participants which the team finds suitable.”
Absorption of the disabled in the workplace is the most concrete challenge t overcome in integrating into able-bodied society. At this stage, the Shai Society is working through personal approaches to business managers and owners. “Globes” has made its contribution by putting at the Society's’disposal its companies database; manpower consultancy company Keinan Shefi helps in job placement. Anyone who can lobbies friends and acquaintances.
”For the time being, we have approaches from the fields of customer service, software, and computing,” says Grauer, adding, “But there are other fields which need to be developed. The job placement program is experimental, and represents a new tier in the Society’s activity. Following an advertisement published in “Globes”, there were a number of inquiries. I estimate that one or two people will be placed in jobs shortly. We have 40 candidates, and of the ten in the first group, five are already in the process of finding jobs, while the other five are undergoing training.”
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 24 June, 2001