[newsletter title:] A New Year and New Directions at aChord
Dear friends and supporters,
I write to you now at the close of my first year as CEO at aChord, a year during which the aChord team has succeeded in broadening our activities in promising new directions. Confronting the Coronavirus crisis, we have responded by developing creative tools to address the special challenges it poses for intergroup relations in our society. People and organizations doing the work on the ground are already utilizing these additional tools.
During this last year, we launched a new Impact Consulting Department whose aim it is to provide research-based guidance, including an effective toolkit to help organizations promote the sort of mindset and actions that support more equal, tolerant, and respectful intergroup relations. Extensive efforts are already underway in aChord to enhance, among other areas, the relations between the ultra-Orthodox community and the rest of Israeli society.
Intergroup relations in Israel pose challenges even in normal times. The pandemic has engendered a wave of complex new tensions here – but also new opportunities, as shown by a study we conducted together with the PICR Lab at the height of the coronavirus crisis this past spring. This week, we published a comprehensive new document (in Hebrew) presenting various facets of the situation, and highlighting points for further consideration, from a social psychology perspective. It sets forth the challenges and opportunities facing us and proposes effective modes of action and methods to leverage available opportunities to promote a society with greater equality, tolerance and respect.
I am pleased to share, below, a brief update on developments in the various areas of activity at aChord.
Employment
The advent of the Coronavirus crisis had a dramatic impact on employment here in Israel, as elsewhere. We needed to assess the nature of the impact very quickly and understand what it means in terms of efforts to advance greater diversity, inclusion, and equality in employment. Our response centered on reducing the pandemic-related harm to members of different social groups who are too often the first fired or furloughed and the last to return to work. Shortly after the crisis began unfolding, we published our guide to Diversity in Employment in the Coronavirus Era – a Practical Handbook for Managers (Hebrew), offering recommendations for sustaining diversity in employment despite Covid-19 (click here for a summary in English). Next we developed a guide to conducting online interviews -- Taking Diversity Online: Tips for Your Remote Interviews with Candidates from Diverse Groups (in Hebrew) – to help managers create the fairest possible online interview climate for candidates from less advantaged communities. We published our analysis of current challenges involving employment diversity and equality in leading media outlets dealing with the economy. An article addressing the challenges and opportunities of advancing ultra-Orthodox employment in the wake of the coronavirus crisis (Hebrew) by Dr. Ornit Ramati Dvir and Dr. Rona Stein, Director and Lead Researcher, respectively, of the Employment Department at aChord, was published on the Calcalist website (the online economic forum of Yedioth Aharonoth). Their article outlined the changes taking place in Haredi employment since the advent of Covid-19. In my op-ed entitled “Employers, don't allow your least advantaged workers to pay the price for the coronavirus” published in The Marker (Haaretz), I called on employers to consider the psychological biases that might lead them to delay the return of furloughed employees from minority groups. Better awareness of such biases can help them avoid inadvertently contributing to potentially serious, long-term damage to the employment prospects of disadvantaged groups.
During this period, we also moved our interventions for businesses to a digital platform and recast the content to reflect current realities. Following a request by our partners at Co-Impact and the Ministry for Social Equality, we undertook research to examine the employment-related perceptions, opinions, and feelings of Arab citizens amidst the coronavirus crisis. The findings of that research are now serving policy makers and organizations working to advance Arab employment. The Employment Program team at aChord is continuing to develop ways to harness social psychology for diversity in employment even at the height of the present crisis in the job market.
Education for Shared Society
The education for shared society efforts at aChord have continued unabated over the last few months, even as we all adjusted to a completely new reality for the country’s education system. After the pandemic hit, our Education Department began developing lesson plans that would help teachers and educators respond appropriately to the challenges of remote teaching and learning. Our materials address the intergroup relations dimension of current issues in Israeli society – such as, for example, trends that have reinforced existing stereotypes about Haredi society, or issues related to how Arab society is faring compared with its substantial representation among medical teams. The new lesson plans (Hebrew and Arabic) are adapted for the country’s different education systems as well as for nonformal education, and are already in use.
Meanwhile, we have doubled down on development and application of pedagogic solutions for education for shared society for students in the ultra-Orthodox education system. Among other innovations, we have begun working with elementary schools, and it is gratifying to see the new tailored interventions already in use for the current school year in elementary schools in Tel Aviv. We are also substantially farther along in achieving broader impact throughout the education system. We finished developing teacher training workshops for use both in person and online, which feature pedagogic and technological innovations that will equip numerous teachers with the information and skills necessary to address education for shared society more effectively. Our work with Kehilot Morim (Teacher Communities) in education for shared society has successfully dealt with the challenges of the pandemic, and we are preparing to expand by inaugurating additional teacher communities during the current school year.
Research
The Research Department at aChord has expanded its work tremendously. Having doubled the number of researchers on the team, we are now conducting four times as many research projects as before! This year’s fascinating studies included opinion research involving people with disabilities, an innovative examination of the relations between Jewish and Arab students on campus, and two studies of voting patterns among Arab citizens during election cycles, among other projects. As the pandemic began accelerating, we undertook, together with the PICR Lab at the Hebrew University, a series of investigations to learn about the dominant opinions and feelings in Israeli society during the coronavirus crisis. This research was two-fold, examining what people are thinking and feeling about the pandemic itself and what they think and feel regarding other social groups in Israel. The research mapped levels of perceived threat among each of the groups and examined the connection between a sense of threat and the level of intergroup hostility. The findings of this research became, as noted, the basis for developing aChord interventions designed to provide responses to the challenges of Covid-19 in various realms. These findings were also published in detail in Yedioth Aharonoth as “The Social Virus.”
As the new year gets underway, we plan to conduct research among communities whose relations with one another have deteriorated, examine relations between ultra-Orthodox and secular people, and develop interventions to help improve relations between the groups most harmed by the current crisis.
Impact Consulting
The Consulting, Development and Training department at aChord had a breakthrough year, with the development of new models, knowledge, infrastructure, tools, and training for use with our own staff and externally. All of this has enhanced the professional skills of the aChord team and our capacity to advance social change. During the coming year, we plan to focus on developing aChord’s Impact Consulting capabilities via new projects in important areas with potentially dramatic impact on relations between different groups in Israel: local governments, the police, the media, and public campaigns to start. These new projects will enable us to develop and model social psychology-based consulting methodologies – an innovative practice that we expect will expand and be incorporated into all our other work.
In conclusion
Winding up my first year as CEO, I find myself feeling immensely privileged to be working together with the aChord team to address the crucial and complex challenges of intergroup relations in Israeli society. Under the looming shadow of a political establishment that exacerbates tensions and polarization in our society at the height of a multifaceted crisis in health, the economy, and social relations, the mission of aChord has become more difficult and complicated but also more crucial than ever. The aChord team remains committed to doing its utmost to help and support people and organizations working so hard to advance equality, tolerance and respect in intergroup relations in our society. I invite you to follow our news and updates via the aChord Facebook page.
Notwithstanding the challenges facing us now or on the horizon, I wish everyone observing the Jewish New Year a good Rosh Hashanah, and for all: relief from the pandemic, good health, and bountiful faith in the shared power of the citizens of Israel and the world to work together for a better future.
In heartfelt solidarity,
Ron Gerlitz
CEO, aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change