Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/planeta/6526315859

The Lev Hamifratz branch started in August 2011. So far, we have 60 interested members and volunteers who have signed up with us. Eighteen people showed up at our first meeting. ESRA’s co-chair Adele Hunter and co-vice chair Jane Krivine were present, and both explained what ESRA is all about. We all enjoyed listening to what they had to say. 

At our meeting on September 21, we discussed several important issues. Stanley Canning spoke about moving forward with helping teach English to children in the local schools. Anyone interested in volunteering in this project, please contact Stanley.

We now have two Hebrew speakers who have volunteered to teach conversational Hebrew to English speaking adults. Anyone interested in learning conversational Hebrew, please contact me.

We also have volunteers who will teach conversational English to Hebrew speaking adults who already have a basic knowledge of English but lack the self confidence to use what they know. Anyone who knows of Hebrew speakers who want to participate in learning conversational English, should contact me.

We have decided how we want to serve our local communities. We want to support disadvantaged school children whose parents cannot afford to buy the necessary school books and equipment for the school year. We will also help children whose parents cannot afford to send their children on class trips. The schools in each town (Kiryat Yam, Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Bialik, Kiryat Ata, Haifa, Yokneam, Kiryat Tivon, Ramat Ishai, and Migdal Haemek) will send us information about children who need help and we (the committee) will choose one child from each town each year whowe feel we can help. Since this present school year has already started, and since our branch is just starting, this project will be for the next school year 2012. This way it will give us time to raise money for this purpose.

One of our ideas for raising money is having garage sales in each community, which will be held in the grounds of the schools, each time at a different school in each town. All the profits will be donated for the purpose of helping the needy children. In time we will have other fundraising projects and events.

At each monthly meeting we will try to have a guest speaker. For our October meeting we had

an insurance representative from Harel who explained about the different types of insurance policies and which ones are important for each of us to have. Our December meeting will be a Chanukah Party.

We also discussed what needs to be done in order to attract more people to attend our meetings and to join our group. We need to advertise more and to spread the word about our branch. We will send our notices to the various organizations - Telfed, AACI, Aliyah Haifa, Nefesh B'Nefesh in each town, Haifa English Speakers website, Anglo List, and others - and to  the local newspapers  - The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Israel Hayom, Ma'ariv and Yedioth Achronot. We hope that by doing this we will get a lot more people to join our group.

In addition to the volunteering side of the Lev Hamifratz branch, there is also the social side. We are planning nights of games (cards, board games, casino, bingo, etc.), bowling, movies, food tasting, and more. Anyone interested in co-chairing for social events, please contact me.

We also want to get a team together to start producing our monthly newsletters. We need people who are good with desktop publishing. Anyone who can write a short story or has a favorite recipe that he/she would like to submit, please contact me.

If there is anyone who would like to make a crossword puzzle or word search puzzle or sudoko puzzle, please contact us.

We need at least one person from each community to find small/private businesses which would like to advertise their businesses in our monthly newsletters. Anyone interested in handling this task in his/her own community, please contact me for samples and prices of advertisements.

Thank you Maya and the John Bryce school for allowing us to hold our meetings in your buildings. John Bryce is a school for learning all about computers and the web, and is highly recommended. 

Please feel free to contact anyone from our committee at any time:

Marsha Ohayon,  Chairperson - marvics2001@yahoo.com 050 228 0755

Stanley Canning, English Teaching Co-Chairman - cannings@maccabi.org.il

Steve Levicoff, Program Co-Chairman - levicoff2002@yahoo.com

Lois Eliyahu, Membership Co-Chairman - lois_eliyahu@hotmail.com 

Marsha Ohayon is chairperson of ESRA Lev Hamifratz.