1. Say No to Drugs Program

The official opening of the "Say No to Drugs" program will be held on Monday evening, March 22, at the Nof Arad Hotel. P2K allocated $15,000 in the 1999 budget for this program. The program will use an interactive computer program to teach 5th and 6th graders the dangers of drug abuse. Other sponsors of the program include:

• Arad Municipal Education Dept.
• Association for Educational Advancement in Yafo
• Arad Parent - Teacher's Association
• Ministry of Education
• Arad Anti Drug Abuse Authority
• Deborah Meir Foundation

The Arad city council has designated the war on drugs as a high priority and has passed a 2% increase in the municipal taxes to be earmarked for funding the continuation of the anti drug abuse campaign.

2. Kefiada 1999

The JAFI Israel Dept. has begun to gear up for the Kefiada. The coordinator for the southern regions will be a new staff member named Avi Bogoch. He has initiated contact with Bernie Cohen to start the process of recruiting volunteer counselors for the summer. Each counselor will cost P2K between $900 - $1000. $18,000 has been allocated.

Recruitment should have begun over a month ago, so the cluster communities will have to act quickly and intensively to locate and interview appropriate candidates. Avi should be meeting soon with Arik Fialko and Oren Sher from the community center to start organizing the camp in Arad. Bernie, please keep us informed how its going.

3. Community Leadership Mission to NJD Cluster

A group of 5 members of the Arad-Tamar Community Leadership group is scheduled to visit the NJD cluster federations for a week to 10 days immediately following the Passover holiday. They are: Alex Vered, Moshe Rubinstein, Vivian Griss, Ofir Cohen, and Rachel Kol. They will be joined by Eyal Keydar, as representative of Mayor Tabib. The main subject for discussion will be the future plans for increasing the level of Living Bridge, people-to-people programs between the partner communities and the region.

4. Governor of Delaware

The governor of Delaware is planning to visit Israel in July 1999. I had the pleasure of accompanying the governor's advance party to the region on Wednesday, March 17. John Pastor, Cynthia Kane and Cynthia's husband Richard drove with me to the region to visit sites that might be of interest to the governor, who is coming to Israel to try to strengthen the economic ties between the two states.

We met Haim Straze and Yehoyakim Gavish at the Dead Sea Works plant, Yaacov Belfer and Corinne Tuita at the their Fata Morgana tourism attraction at Moshav Neot Hakikar, and Mayor Bezalel Tabib, Vice-mayor Yuval Shachaf, Yossi Dar and Topaz Carmi at the Arad Technological Incubator. A good time was had by all. Many thanks to Nadia Granitz for organizing the itinerary and to Yaacov and Corinne for a delicious fish lunch.

5. Stockton College

Shmuel Kaplan reports that the group from Stockton College had a marvelous time in the region on March 15 - 17. Their visit to the region included all the tourist attractions and a dinner with invited activists from the Arad community leadership group. Bernie, you should be able to get some free public relations about this trip from your local Jewish newspaper. Send us a copy of the article!

6. Net Friends Program

Bertha Pistarov reports that the teacher training in Arad for implementation of this program is moving along as planned. The problem right now, according to Bertha, is that the schools that were supposed to participate in the program from the cluster communities have not kept up the communications with their Israeli counterparts.

The Coordinators from the Arad schools claim that they are waiting for the cluster school coordinators to answer their correspondences. Bertha would like to see Rami Goren from the Albert Einstein School in Delaware take an active lead in following up with the other teachers in the cluster. Toni, do you think you can speak to Rami about this?

7. Pen Pals Program

Oren Sher, the director of the Arad Community Center suggested that we advertise the possibility of getting a pen pal from the cluster though the schools, local newspapers, and science center. I will be in contact with Arik Fialko to figure out how this can be done asap. In any case, we must accept the fact that for demographic and cultural reasons, this program will attract many less participants in Arad than it did in the cluster. Heidi Weinberg is looking into other means of connecting the cluster children who have volunteered for the project to pen pals in Israel.

8. Strategic Planning

I have completed an initial draft of a position paper for the NJD Cluster to use as a basis for opening the discussions on future directions for the partnership in the region. The paper will be distributed to the Israeli members of the joint steering committee as well. Anyone interested in receiving a copy of the paper can contact me or Jeff Lipkin.

Topaz Carmi reports that 2 economic consultants have been interviewed, and the subcommittee will decide this week on one of them to help the subcommittee to determine what projects to support in the future.

I would like to suggest again that more committee members on both sides use the chat group that was started by Haim Straze to bounce ideas off of one another as we work our way toward the next meeting of the steering committee in May.

9. Science Center Statistics

Nearly $237,000 was spent over the last 3 years on scientific, computer and video equipment for the Arad Science Center. I did an analysis of the rate of utilization of the equipment at the center and found that the numbers were quite respectable. Many thanks to Hanna Gur and Miriam Aharon for their cooperation.

2,464 students used the center as part of their regular school science curriculum. 389 students participated in after school enrichment activities, and almost 4700 children and adults used the facility at least once for special activities during the present school year. 49% of the school children and 86% of the enrichment class participants were from the forth, fifth and sixth grades. A more detailed picture can be gained by reviewing the attached excel file.

10. Interns for Peace

Rabbi Bruce Cohen of the Interns for Peace organization contacted me to discuss how his organization can help Arad students develop values of democracy, inter-denominational tolerance and religious pluralism. I asked him to draft a proposal by Passover to send to the cluster for consideration.

11. Personnel Changes at JAFI Israel Dept.

Sharon Levin will be leaving her position as Director of the Unit for Communities Abroad at the end of this month. She will be replaced by David Bernstein, who will move over from the JAFI Missions Dept. David is an experienced professional who is very familiar with P2K. Also, Rebecca Stern has replaced Iris Weiner as Associate Director of the unit. Good Luck, David and Rebecca.

March 1999