Watch this episode without interruptions.
More than twenty ambassadors and diplomatic spouses gathered at Shalva, Israel’s National Center for Disabled Children in Jerusalem, for the launch of a new “Diplomatic Ladies Circle,” an effort to turn these women into advocates for disability inclusion in their home countries.
The idea came from Chaya Bisker, a mother of a daughter with Down syndrome who relocated her family to Israel for access to Shalva’s programs, Tali Rubin, wife of the Paraguay ambassador to Israel and a Shalva volunteer, and Linda Cohen, wife of Panama’s ambassador. Together, they concluded that diplomatic women were uniquely positioned to spread Shalva’s model, since they have “the possibility to impact the entire world,” said Bisker. She added that the goal isn’t just exporting a program but a philosophy centred on “goodness, solidarity, and the care of families,” not policy alone.
The response echoed that ambition. Valeria, wife of Argentina’s investment representative, called Shalva “a place full of energy, full of joy,” while Cohen said a single visit led her husband to declare, “We need to do something with this in Panama.”
Cohen added that Shalva changed her and her husband completely, in a way that they decided to transform a feeling into a formal proposal.
Tali Rubin volunteers weekly at Shalva, with four-year-old children. After being enchanted by Shalva’s project, she decided, together with Bisker and Cohen, to recruit other women, arguing that small efforts, multiplied across countries, “will be something big” capable of changing the reality of people with disabilities around the world.
Behind the diplomacy is a founding story rooted in hope. Shalva’s president, Mr. Kalman Samuels, recounted how his son, Yossi, was born healthy in 1977 but left blind and deaf after a faulty vaccine batch that Israeli authorities failed to recall for six months, injuring hundreds of children.
Urged by others to institutionalize his son, his wife instead vowed that if God ever helped Yossi communicate, she would dedicate her life to helping other families. Years later, a deaf teacher’s breakthrough, spelling the Hebrew word for “table” into Yossi’s palm, proved he could learn language, and a speech therapist later taught him to speak. That promise became Shalva, which grew from five children in a rented apartment in 1990 to a campus now serving thousands.
Mr. Samuels said Israel’s Foreign Ministry has effectively treated the center as an informal ambassador, citing its ability to connect people “whether it’s a family member, whether it’s a friend” regardless of politics. They pointed to Mozambique, where a Shalva-trained founder built the country’s first center for children with disabilities using methods shared directly by the Jerusalem team.
The hope, the Diplomatic Ladies Circle founders said, is that each woman in the new circle will carry the model home “at the level they can manage,” said Bisker, turning one morning in Jerusalem into a network spanning continents.
Source:
www.jpost.com
