Olga Talitsky starts pursuit of job in Israel (photo by Douglas Guthrie)

Sixteen new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, all of them living in the Afula-Gilboa region, are receiving an advanced Hebrew ulpan with funding from the SNEC Partnership 2000 program.

"These students are all university graduates," explains Eshel Fram, Jewish Agency Regional Manager in Afula-Gilboa. "They are very highly qualified and highly motivated people. The aim of the ulpan is to provide them with a platform to seek employment in Israel and be better equipped to compete in the job market."

The six month ulpan, initiated by the Afula-Gilboa SNEC partnership, is also funded by the Jewish Agency's Department of Immigration and Absorption and the Afula Municipality. It is being conducted in cooperation with the Association of Community Centers which allows the course to be conducted rent-free in the Bet Eshkol Community Center in Afula and the Kibbutz Movement, which houses the new immigrants on kibbutzim through the First Home in the Homeland program.

The ulpan program, called ROM-Aliyah Academic, includes advanced Hebrew with an emphasis on the "Professional Hebrew" and special vocabulary required to find employment in the job market. In addition the new immigrants are given English lessons and familiarized with how to use computers.

Olga Talitsky, who reached Israel in September 1998 from Moscow with her husband Yevgeny and two children, says that the course has been very informative.

"It really gives us a clear idea of what is expected of us in the market," explains Talitsky, who like her husband is a construction engineer.

Alexei Kirchner, a widower from Irkutsk, Russia who also immigrated with his son in 1998 and is also a civil engineer was also impressed by the course. "Now its all up to me," he commented. "I couldn't have expected to be so well prepared."

  June 1999