MILIM – A Head Start for Ethiopian Children
MILIM (Hebrew for words) is YEDID’s intensive program to prepare Ethiopian kindergarten children for first grade and increase their chances for a successful academic future. As part of the program, YEDID works with their parents to help them understand the Israeli educational system and its expectation for parents to be partners in learning.
Ofakim, one of UJC MetroWest’s sister cities in Israel, has two MILIM groups, with a total of 30 children. Each session lasts four hours. The groups meet in kindergarten classrooms of a local school; half of the children are students of the host school. Each session begins with a hot meal. The sessions include frontal learning, small group instruction geared to different reading and math levels, and creative learning activities, all of which combined teach the four basic learning skills that children need to begin first grade: Literacy, Coordination, Social Competence, and Comprehension/Abstraction. In order to increase the children’s understanding of, and absorption into, Israeli society, the groups observe holidays and days of remembrance and learn about Israeli customs and compare them to Ethiopian customs. The children also go on several field trips during the year with their parents, since these families rarely have the opportunity to leave the town, or even the neighborhood, in which they live.
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