Community Life
The ARDC conducts and participates in a variety of events, workshops, activities, and programs aimed at enriching and developing the life and culture of the Asylum Seeker community in Israel. The aim of our Community Life program is twofold: to bridge the gap between Asylum Seekers and Israelis and to sustain and maintain the community’s culture.
The community life at the ARDC is devoted to empowerment. Under its umbrella, people are coming together from many different backgrounds and identities, all full of life and culture, through interactive, positive and educational experiences.
The community life consists of all of our enrichment programs, some special events, and some on-going workshops, that reflect the wide range of cultural and social activities in which we are engaged.
Special Events
The ARDC is partnering with other artists and organizations in order to carry out projects; some are dedicated to community cultural events, some connecting with Israeli society, and some marking international days. Their purpose is to strengthen the community and expose Israel to its lively culture through art, personal acquaintance and storytelling.
Our events include a world refugee day festival, hearing personal stories and embracing what it means to be a refugee, 30/30 breakfasts, which brings influential Israeli entrepreneurs and outstanding Asylum Seekers together, and an international women’s day event, a festive and colorful event with many wonderful speakers, musicians, and delicious and colorful Eritrean and African food.
Women's day Event
March 8th, 2019: organized by The ARDC and the EWCC (Eritrean Women's Community Center)
The ARDC runs several workshops which consist of meeting for multiple sessions, such as, an art forum workshops which not only connect Asylum Seekers and Israelis through art but also allows them to reflect and think of their homes and journeys as refugees.
Additionally, our Holocaust history workshops, created following requests of asylum seekers, are designated to answer questions and shed a light about the history of the people of Israel in the darkest period of all, and to allow the asylum seeker participants, some of them are victims of torture who escaped persecution an genocide, to reflect upon their traumas.
Holocaust History Workshops
Following asylum seeker's requests, during 2019 we initiated series of social-workers led workshops where asylum seekers holocaust survivors met, and discussed together the Jewish history during WWII.
Youth Programs
Once a year, the ARDC runs a weekly workshop for asylum seeker highschool students in Bialik Rogozin school in Tel-Aviv. At the age of 18, Israeli citizens go to the army or to their civil service, and their asylum seeker friends are left with a void. The workshop is a way of empowering and encouraging in order to avoid confusion for graduating students who found themselves out of structured systems, with very few support frames. In the workshop,we give them tools that will assist them in pursuing further education or developing professionally.
Refugee Day Festival 2019
On June 20, 2019, the world celebrated World Refugee Day. The ARDC collaborated with 1:1, The Train Theater, The Goethe-Institut Israel, and Offscreen to organize a festival in order to show support to and to honor asylum seekers and refugees around the world and in Israel. We had the premiere of a play “The Crazy Refugee’, the book release of ‘The Nightmare of the Exile’ by Adam Ahmed, a film screening of ‘And Breathe Normally’, a collaborative art project and more.
30/30 Breakfast for Women
On July 9th, 2019, in the offices of WeWork, the ARDC & 3030 held its second breakfast where 30 talented women of the asylum-seeking community met with 30 leading women of the professional community of Tel Aviv. The 30 for 30 breakfast was a chance to build bridges between these two communities through conversation and story sharing. This united two worlds that would not otherwise have the opportunity to connect. It provided a platform for connection and opened doors.