What We Do at MESILA

Reception and Intake

During reception hours we meet, listen and assist
members of the foreign community in obtaining medical, welfare, educational, and municipal services. Our
intake program allows us to provide more advanced
services, such as couples therapy, women's health services, assistance in enrolling children in schools, hospital debt forgiveness and in-depth therapy sessions with
MESILA social workers. This way we are able to maintain daily contact with the community and learn about
its changing needs.
Youth Staff
Low socioeconomic standing, parents with
long work hours, neglect, abuse and rape are realities commonly faced by the foreign community's children, and they all contribute to the children's status
of at-risk youth. A team of expert social workers on
MESILA's Youth Staff works with these children in an
effort to improve life within their families. Our staff
also gives tremendous support to children with special needs; because they are undocumented, they receive
no support, medical care or social services. In extreme
cases, our Youth Staff works with the welfare services
to transfer children to safer environments, such as boarding schools or foster families.
Our Youth Staff receives information about at-risk
youth from the education system, the police, hospitals,
and also from MESILA's information network. We
also run preventative programs, integrating children
into after-school activities and daycares, setting up group therapy sessions for children and teens, and facilitating parent enrichment sessions.
The Babysitters Pirate Daycares
The phenomenon of "babysitters" - unlicensed
daycares - is the direct result of the mothers difficulty
in balancing their long work hours with raising their
children without help. Each kindergarten is run by one
"babysitter", a woman who usually has no training in
childcare, watching over dozens of children all day and
taking a monthly fee of 350 to 500 shekels per child.
Currently, MESILA is aware of approximately 70 such
pirate daycares in Tel Aviv. Physical conditions are appalling, with countless safety and building code violations, and children crammed into small spaces and often
spend their days sitting idly in cribs. More than 3,000

infants spend long hours at the daycares, often stay until late, and some spend the night. Tragically, several infants have died at these daycares in the last few years.
In many cases, parents have no alternative for their
children. As undocumented foreigners, the government
has deemed them ineligible for financial support, work
permits or subsidized rates at licensed daycares.
MESILA has invested a great effort in trying to
improve conditions at the daycares:
Raising awareness among policy-makers and in
the media
Facilitating pedagogical training workshops and
improving physical conditions in the babysitters
Forming recovery plans with the babysitters
Providing homework help and enrichment
Developing alternative frameworks
Educating parents about their options
Center for Victims of Trafficking
Some of the asylum seekers were kidnapped by
Bedouins in the Sinai Peninsula, held for ransom and
experienced intense physical, emotional and sexual trauma. By law, recognized victims of trafficking are entitled to one year of rehabilitation in a shelter, but due
to the large amounts of victims, many have to wait
for room. Once their year of rehabilitation is complete however, victims are no longer entitled to any services. For this reason, MESILA has set up the Center
for Victims of Trafficking, which serves men and women who are on the waiting list for a shelter, as well as
those who have completed their year of rehabilitation.
The Center's programs are mostly funded by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services, but MESILA is looking to widen the scope and improve the services the
Center provides services the government will not fund.
Community Work
MESILA works with community leaders in order
to develop methods of empowerment - including activities for children and informative groups for parents that will allow them to live independently. Community
works complements our particular work with a preventive approach while identifying the community's unique
needs, in order to decrease numbers of at-risk children.
MESILA is setting up a creative space for communal
initiatives, with hope to allow community members to
meet, network and take control of their community.

70

Over
pirate
daycares

operate in
Tel Aviv and
receive support
from MESILA
volunteers

20

new cases of
at-risk youth
are identified by
MESILA every
month

130

families

take part in
MESILA's
Parenting
Workshops
every year

80

volunteers

work with
MESILA in
order to improve
chilfrens' lives
MESILA
Rishon Le'zion
St. 3, Tel Aviv
6605403
Tel: 03-7248238
Fax: 03-6879758

About MESILA

30,000

asylum
seekers from
Africa
arrived in Tel Aviv
between the years
2007-2012, most
of them from
Sudan and Eritrea

60,000
foreign
citizens

live in Tel Aviv,

including 6,000
children and
200 unattended
minors

MESILA supports undocumented families of asylum-seekers and migrant workers

living in Tel Aviv. At MESILA, we focus
primarily on the wellbeing of the community's children, and we regard the surrounding family and
community structures as critical factors. Despite
Israel's participation in the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, those children are left unsupported by the
government and by Israeli society, and often suffer
from extreme poverty, a lack of basic rights and stunted emotional and physical security.
MESILA's staff, which includes social workers and
therapists of various kinds, works cooperatively with
the municipal welfare authorities. Together, we carry
out a wide array of projects in response to the foreign
community's needs.
This community is essentially invisible to Israeli
society and government, and in the absence of a coherent government policy on the matter, it can be difficult
to grant this community meaningful care. MESILA's
staff operates creatively and with determination to aid
this community and strengthen it by addressing basic
humanitarian needs in especially dire situations, but
mostly we develop long-term projects aimed at providing tools to improve the children's lives.

MESILA works to improve the living conditions

of foreign children:
Personal assistance: advice, instruction, mediation
and therapy
Communal assistance: identifying and assessing
social situations, leadership development, creating
communal support networks
Advocacy: influencing national policy relating to
the foreign community

policy
community
institutions
family
child

MESILA was founded by the Tel Aviv municipality in 1999, as a response to the growing migrant worker population in the city. It is an open door to the foreign community and a window for policy makers into this
community's reality. MESILA is partially funded by the
city of Tel Aviv and the Ministry of Welfare and Social
Services, but most of its projects are made possible with
the support of individual donors and organizations, such
as the European Union and the UN Refugee Agency.