Inside Chimes Israel: A Talk with Pamela Azaria

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Well, it’s Mike Trim with Crawford Media Group. We’re here with Pamela Azaria. Pamela is with Chimes Israel. She is speaking to us from Israel. And Pamela, thanks for taking the time. So grateful for you.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:13

Thank you. Thank you for having me again the second time we’re talking.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:19

I appreciate it. Last time we talked, there were some hard topics, some hard things to talk about, but we want our listeners to understand what’s going on in Israel and the help that Chimes Israel is providing to adults and children with developmental disabilities. First of all, let’s Let’s have you talk just a little bit about your position, Chimes Israel. Just give us the overview, if you would, please.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:49

Sure. CHIMES Israel is an organization that’s been around since 1991, and we help people with disabilities throughout Israel, mostly in the central part of Israel. We provide early childhood rehabilitative care, after-school programs, all kinds of work programs, both sheltered and in the community. Also, vocational college for people with disabilities. Mental health employment support, so if somebody’s been in mental health care, we help them get back on their feet and find work. And also we help people who are aging with disabilities who can no longer work. We have leisure programs for them and therapy and they come to our centers every day. And we have 26 centers. We help everybody no matter who they are. They can be any religion in Israel. We help everyone, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. A lot of our clients are refugees from war-torn countries, such as in the Congo, who we’re going to speak about soon. And we just try to improve their quality of life. and make sure that they are active and part of the community and maintain dignity and find, you know, their purpose in life. So that’s what times does.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:46

So, Pamela, that’s a lot. You work with a lot of different people, aren’t you?

SPEAKER 02 : 2:51

Yeah, we do. And my job is, as you can tell, I’m an American. So I work with people overseas to fundraise for special programs for people with disabilities. So, for example, I just came back from the States. We were in Washington, D.C., and in Detroit, Michigan, and we had a fundraiser to raise money for a new early childhood center that we’re trying to build in Ashkelon, which is about six miles from Gaza and receives the most rocket fire of any other city in Israel. And our centers there are in houses like – residential homes with lots of stairs um in four four houses three of them have uh bomb shelters one of them doesn’t all the bomb shelters are too small to fit everyone and when there’s a siren warning uh warning us that uh a rocket or a missile is coming um they can’t get their in time because there’s so many stairs and some of the children are not mobile. And frankly, the rooms don’t fit everyone. So we have We have wonderful people and our therapists are amazing and our caregivers are amazing. But the buildings that we’re in are not suited for the purpose that we have them for. And that’s why we need to build a new early childhood center in Ashkelon.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:40

So when somebody from the States gives, that’s one of the projects that they potentially could be giving for, right?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:48

Exactly, exactly. And that’s the one that we’re pushing for right now. We do have a lot of other projects, some that deal with resilience that have to do with What what Israelis have been going through for the last two years and and there’s a lot of PTSD going on and a lot of trauma in Israel. Some having to do with just self-advocacy and empowerment for people with disabilities. Um, these are important programs, um, that, that I raised money for, but specifically in Detroit, um, we had a really wonderful fundraiser for, um, to raise money for this new early childhood sensor. One of the hosts in Detroit, um, she had lost her daughter to, um, I forgot the name of the disability, but her daughter, cerebral palsy, it was cerebral palsy. Okay. and she’s her husband’s Israeli and she’s American. And, um, she felt like this was by raising money for our organization. It was a way to honor her daughter who had passed. And we, we raised, um, a nice amount of money from that fundraiser. So if anybody out there wants to do a fundraiser, um, in, in a local area, we can come and we can bring people to speak. We brought a mother who’s also a soldier, and she spoke about her child with disabilities, time at our Ashkelon Center and how we helped them and how we helped her family. And it was really a wonderful event. And the people who came were so loving and caring and generous. So good. Yeah, it was really wonderful. Thank God. It was great.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:11

We’re speaking with Pamela Azaria. Pamela is with Chimes Israel. And Pamela has been gracious enough from Israel to join us a couple times. This is our second chance to speak with her. And Pamela, you helped a family of Congolese Christians in I don’t want us to run out of time before you have a chance to talk about them a little bit, your work with their two children, please.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:32

Okay, so we have an early childhood center in Tel Aviv. And there was a family called the Lumindi family, and they were an asylum-seeking family from Congo. In Israel, there’s a lot of people seeking asylum from war-torn countries in Africa. And they had a child. His name is Malaya, who was… He had an intellectual disability and autism. And so he went to our center, which I want to say how our centers work. We have eight centers throughout Israel that help children ages six months to three years. And we provide everything in the center, which is really unique around the world. Diagnoses, therapy, parental education and guidance, daycare for the children, home cooked meals. And so Malaya, he was in this center, but it was very difficult for them because they didn’t speak Hebrew or English very well. And so our staff not only cared for him in the centers, but we took him to all of his medical and developmental assessments with social services. and the healthcare providers so that they could admit him into the system and he could get his care with us for free. And also, Because they were refugees with very little money, we assisted them in obtaining financial assistance and food through their social worker. We often sent him home with leftover food from the lunches that we had at the center. We have a cook there making healthy food. We had one of our staff members who spoke French acted as the translator for them often in situations where they had to be working with the government or the city. During Malaya’s stay, his mother was pregnant and she gave birth to a second son and his name is Victory. Last year, Victory joined the center as well, and he also had significant developmental delays. Initially, the family’s healthcare provider refused to conduct the diagnostic evaluation, citing that general diagnosis was presented when Victory joined the center. However, because the diagnosis was so unspecific, It prevented the therapist and the medical professionals from developing his care strategy. So our team worked very hard to get Victory’s health care provider to approve an in-depth child development evaluation for a clear diagnosis. And a speech therapist from the center brought the family to the evaluation to ensure that he received all the necessary tests. And they found out that he had an intellectual developmental disability and autism like his brother. And we continued to care for him in the best way, knowing that we understood what his challenges were. So it wasn’t just… care at home at our centers but we stepped in to you know try to provide the family everything they needed as people who were um foreigners in the country and um you know with without the language skills which i can understand because my hebrew isn’t so great either so um i’m sure me too So it’s very scary to try to, to try to navigate, you know, a social services world when you don’t speak the language. So I’m lucky because I have a husband who is Israeli and does speak Hebrew. So he went to all the kids’ conferences and everything like that. But I can just understand what they’ve been going through. And that’s what we do for all of our clients. Whatever they need, we try to meet their needs. Because we really care about the families, the children, the clients that we serve. And I think I told you last time when I was on this about how we stepped in during COVID. during the beginning of the the war. Yeah. And we we raised money and we brought them we brought food and medicine and clothing and and a Equipment rehabilitative equipment to the homes and then we sent our, our staff to the homes who they were braving the rocket fire. So this is what our organization does and our staff is just their heroes. They’re dedicated and they love what they do. And it’s, it’s a place like no other And we just need to continue to raise money so that we can meet all the needs of our clients.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:57

Well, Pamela, your staff, they’re rock stars. They’re so brave. I think more so than our listeners can know. So I’ll close this with this. The website is chimesisrael.org.il. Thank you for making the time with us.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:15

Thank you, Mike. It’s so great. And I’m so excited because I’m coming to Colorado next month. Thank you for your work and getting the word out about us. And I look forward to speaking with you again.