Of course, Siegel’s continued work in the field also helps him bring an international perspective to his classes of international students. “It requires you to go through the process of introduction and transition of identity … So it really is a sense of completing that circle.” “Coming to Israel to me was sort of a natural evolution … However, when you come to a new country, you are an immigrant,” he says. Which is really very exciting.” Global PerspectiveĪs a former international student at HebrewU himself, Siegel says, he identifies with his RIS students as they adjust to life in Jerusalem. After facing roadblocks with transportation and manpower, they decided to change their approach – and ended up launching a new volunteer department within Israel’s national housing authority.īy the end of the course, Siegel says, “It’s around a 70 to 80 percent success rate in making these projects happen. How do you overcome the obstacles? How do you find different ways of doing it?’ And it becomes a really exciting part of the course.”įor example, Siegel remembers one group of students who decided to help families in need find furniture. “Somebody’s board of directors changes things, funding gets lost … So what I teach is, there’s always a very nice, linear, logical way of doing project management, but the reality is much messier.” As students encounter problems, “I work with them and say, ‘Okay, you’re stuck. “It’s not project management theoretically they have to come up with an idea and make it happen in eight months.” After the first few weeks, he says, most groups start to run into obstacles. “All the materials that I was using for working with people in the field, they’ve become my training materials for my students.”Īs part of the curriculum, Siegel guides students through their own real-life experience in community development. “I continue to have one foot in the field, and I now have another foot in academia … I get to tell stories from what happened to me the morning before, and use that as an example,” he says. Siegel says his work around the world informs his teaching at HebrewU. “But I found a human commonality that transcends cultural barriers, language barriers, color barriers, religious barriers.”īecause students at RIS also come from all over the world, Siegel says the opportunity to teach at the school seemed like a natural fit – and as a former HebrewU student himself, he says, “the idea of having a connection again to this program is something that really grabbed me.” In the Classroom “Someone might say, ‘They’re going to drop you literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to do community work. Past projects have taken Siegel to Thailand, Kenya, Mozambique, Brazil, Ecuador, the Ukraine, and the Solomon Islands. In addition to his field work and teaching throughout the country, he recently partnered with UN-Habitat, and now spends about 10 weeks of each year outside Israel. Siegel grew up in the United States but studied at HebrewU during college, and eventually returned to Israel as a community center worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “My father was a community center director and my mother was a director of the United Way.”īut Siegel says it’s more than the family tradition that drew him to the field: “I have a lot of fun, and I work with fantastic people … They’re not people who are just complaining about the situation of the world, but people who are trying to actively improve things and make life better for themselves and for others.” My father, my mother, my brother, my sister-in-law, and now my daughter,” he says. “We have three generations of community workers in my family. A Family Traditionįor Yoel Siegel, social work is in the blood. Siegel holds a doctorate in community development from the University of Sussex, a master’s degree in community social work from Case Western Reserve University, and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Boston University. He is also the co-founder of InterLoc Development, a company that promotes and facilitates local development projects around the world, and a consultant for UN-Habitat, the United Nations agency for human settlements and sustainable urban development. Yoel Siegel is a lecturer in community development at Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School (RIS).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |