The Jewish Agency for Israel’s platform for emergency preparedness and community resilience, JReady, has launched the Toronto cohort of a disaster management course that has been offered to Jewish community leaders from around the world.
In partnership with Tel Aviv University (TAU), JReady created a semester-long course for community managers, based on the lectures and content of TAU’s academic program in Disaster Management, which reinforces community leaders with the tools, expertise, and networks to respond to crises and build resilience.
During its first year, the program trained dozens of Jewish leaders from South Africa, Europe, Australia, Mexico, Central America, and Israel, often bringing together Israeli and overseas partner communities from The Jewish Agency’s Partnership2Gether (P2G) platform.
The course’s latest cohort brings together participants from a diverse array of professional backgrounds — security, education, welfare, social work, mental health, community rabbis, Jewish organizations, and more — in collaboration with P2G’s partnership between Toronto and Eilat/Eilot, through the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. Twenty-four participants from Toronto and 12 from Eilat/Eilot are immersing themselves in a syllabus that features lectures covering community management in emergency situations, decision-making during crisis, addressing mental health, emergency planning for family and community, resilience, communication, case study analysis, and mobilization of volunteer networks.
"With the world still in the midst of this unprecedented pandemic and with anti-Semitism sadly increasing across the globe and in North America, the JReady platform offers tailored tools and services to help bolster community resilience,” said CEO and Director General of The Jewish Agency Amira Ahronoviz. “We can never know when an emergency will occur, but we can - and should - be as prepared as possible when facing a community-wide challenge."
According to JReady, the Canadian Jewish community’s existing robust framework for emergency preparedness and response, as well as the community’s eagerness to fill gaps within that infrastructure, made Toronto an ideal choice for the course’s new cohort.
UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, meanwhile, will be using the course to not only strengthen resiliency, but also deepen community relationships. Through the course, UJA sees a unique opportunity to grow connections among professionals throughout the Toronto Jewish community, while also creating new relationships between Toronto Jewry and peers in Israel. For many who may not yet be deeply involved in community life, UJA sees tremendous potential for this program to expand the community’s tent while strengthening relationships with UJA’s partner community of Eilat/Eilot.
“UJA Federation of Greater Toronto is extremely excited to be collaborating with The Jewish Agency and Tel Aviv University on this world-class initiative,” said William Kleinbaum, Managing Director of Israel & Overseas at UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. “The Toronto Jewish community has a special bond with Israel and its people, which includes being there for each other and learning from one another. This is especially imperative when it comes to working together to manage crises and build resilience, recognizing that shared challenges call for shared solutions.”
JReady was created by The Jewish Agency in 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenging consequences, as well as various crises that continue to impact Jewish communities worldwide. The disaster management course is one of the platform’s flagship programs.
From the outset of each course, all members of the cohort join a WhatsApp group in order to ensure that participants remain in communication as they navigate their communal crises. Participants have reported that this ongoing communication has created a more unified and coordinated emergency response among different Jewish communities within the same country which had previously operated independently.
Dr. Bruria Adini, Head of the Department of Emergency Management and Disaster Medicine in the School of Public Health at Tel Aviv University, added: “Building and retaining resilience in communities is a constant learning process. Much can be gleaned from how other communities faced similar challenges, so this partnership between JReady and Tel Aviv University is based on a joint effort of communication, sharing, and disseminating what we’ve learned together.”