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From: Meir Weiss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 10:23
Subject: FW: Israeli NGO to advise UN on disabilities policy



From: Israel MFA Online [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 10:10
To: [concealed] Weiss Meir
Subject: Israeli NGO to advise UN on disabilities policy


 MFA Newsletter 
 

Israeli NGO to advise UN on disabilities policy
Beit Issie Shapiro has become one of just 12 Israeli organizations to win
special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council
(By Avigayil Kadesh)
                                
BIS opened Israel’s first hydrotherapy program and hydrotherapists’ training
program 
Ra’anana-based nonprofit Beit Issie Shapiro (BIS) won special consultative
status in 2012 from the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)
-- one of only 12 Israeli organizations to receive this standing — earning
Executive Director Jean Judes a chance to share “the best of what Israel has
to offer the world" at the fifth session of UN Enable, a conference on the
rights of the disabled. 
Slots at the September 2012 meeting were also reserved for the Israeli
organizations Bizchut, the Israeli Human Rights Center for People with
Disabilities; and Netzivut, the Commission for Rights of Persons with
Disabilities. 
“The UN is often criticized for anti-Israel bias, but the issue of
disabilities brings strange bedfellows into coalitions,” says Judes. “For
instance, we work intensively in the Israeli Arab community and have been
asked by parents and professionals there for our help. We believe all
children with a disability, no matter where they live, have a right to
services and to be part of a community.”
 

Beit Issie Shapiro provides services such as physical
therapy for 7,000 Israelis with disabilities every year. 
An estimated 15 percent of the world’s population lives with significant
disabilities. 
BIS will assist ECOSOC in serving as the central forum for formulating
economic and social policy recommendations to the UN and member states
concerning people with disabilities.  
“This is an opportunity for us to influence policy in order to bring about a
greater quality of life for these individuals and families," says Judes. “We
want to change the world for people with disabilities.” 
Blazing a trail 
Hydrotherapy, multisensory rooms and inclusive playgrounds are among the
special-needs services BIS has implemented in Israel over the past 32 years
that have become a model beyond Israel's borders.  
“From the beginning, our vision has been to have as wide an impact as
possible in Israel and abroad, not by opening branches but by being a center
of excellence for innovative practices and disseminating our knowledge, as
well as influencing government policy and legislation,” Judes says.
 
BIS depends on what Judes calls “social investors” rather than on government
funding. “We are like an R&D facility,” she says.
 
One happy result of that research and development was Friendship Park (Park
Chaverim), Israel’s first accessible and inclusive playground. 
 
Opened in 2005, this nine-acre area within Ra'anana City Park offers play
equipment designed for children in wheelchairs and with hearing and vision 
impairments. 
 
Because families with special-needs children often avoid playgrounds where
their kids might experience social exclusion, Friendship Park was intended
to host municipal educational activities and festivals for children and
families to foster friendship and inclusivity, says BIS occupational
therapist Michele Shapiro. And the concept has since been copied by other
Israeli municipalities and far-away countries, including Ecuador and
Uruguay.
 
Swimming toward better health
 
Long before most people had ever heard of hydrotherapy – physical therapy
performed in a special heated pool -- BIS sent staff members to the United
States and England to study this emerging field. As a result, BIS
established Israel’s first hydrotherapy center in 1992 and influenced the
government to cover hydrotherapy under national health insurance. 
 
Israel is now recognized as one of six leading countries in the development
of hydrotherapy and boasts about 120 hydrotherapy pools. 
“That is the story of Israel, which is so inspiring,” says Judes.
The BIS training center for hydrotherapists served as a model for similar
educational programs in Israel, and the organization trained hydrotherapists
in Portugal, Spain and the United States. Recently, Uzbekistanrequested
training, says Judes. 
Around the same time, BIS sent Shapiro to Holland to learn about Snoezelen,
a controlled multisensory stimulation environment. There it was used
recreationally, but Shapiro reinvented it for Israel as a therapeutic
approach. 
“We saw it helped our clients by balancing the senses. Hyperactive children
calmed down, while passive kids became more interested in their environment.
But to leverage it in a broad way, we had to have research because no one
would be prepared to take the idea further if we couldn’t prove what it
does.”
In cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, BIS carried out the
world’s first study on therapeutic Snoezelen.  
Beit Issie Shapiro opened Israel’s first Snoezelen multisensory stimulation
rooms and has helped set up 400 more in Israeli institutions. 
 
“We have seen that it works not only for children with developmental
disabilities, but also for adults with Alzheimer’s, children going through
cancer treatment and trauma victims. We’re now doing research with Schneider
[Children’s Medical Center of Israel] on using Snoezelen to calm cystic
fibrosis patients during treatment,” says Judes.
 
BIS has granted many requests to present the research results in foreign
countries, to help set up about 400 Snoezelen rooms in Israel, and to train
more than 1,000 therapists to run them. They’ve also provided training in
the US, South Africa and Europe.
 
Shapiro incorporated elements of Snoezelen in the BIS dental clinic to lower
anxiety – a successful experiment and a world first. The University of
Southern California’s schools of dentistry and occupational therapy
appointed BIS as a consultant to replicate the research with a grant from
the US National Institutes of Health.
In 2010, at the suggestion of a donor, 60 VIPs came with Start-Up Nation
co-author Dan Senor to see how BIS effects social change for the
special-needs population. “Our donor said, ‘We want all this knowledge in
our own communities, to triple the impact of our dollars.’ And that was a
push for us to think more globally,” says Judes. “The connection to the UN
was the natural next step for us." 
 

link to youtube
 


8 August 2013
 
MFA Website
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 


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