WOMEN BEHIND THE HEALING: MEET SISTER AZIZA
Recently, HATD board member Cathy Levine spoke with Sister Azezet Kidane – known as Sister Aziza, co-founder of Kuchinate, an arts-based collective for African asylum-seeking women and an HATD grantee.
Tell us about yourself – where were you born, what brought you to Israel?
I was born in Eritrea. When I was 17, I saw a film about nuns working with leprosy patients. I wanted to do that work, so I entered the convent and became a nun. I agreed to go to South Sudan, where I studied nursing and worked in a leprosy hospital until 2001. I spent 8 years in London, then Jordan followed by Israel.
How did you get involved working with asylum seekers?
I came to Israel with Physicians for Human Rights, to volunteer with refugees and asylum seekers [asylum seekers in Israel have few rights and are rarely granted asylum status]. They needed help bridging cultures and I speak multiple languages including Amharic and Arabic.
How did you get involved working with asylum seekers?
I came to Israel with Physicians for Human Rights, to volunteer with refugees and asylum seekers. [Asylum seekers in Israel have few rights and are rarely granted asylum status]. They needed help bridging cultures and I speak multiple languages, including Amharic and Arabic. I was interviewing African women about their experiences in Sinai – torture, rape, being trafficked. I raised money to open a kindergarten for their children. When that closed, I co-founded Kuchinate, in 2011.
What does Kuchinate do?
First, we provide psychological and spiritual services for women who suffer from past trauma. We provide 1-to1 support on all aspects of life, following women closely, to help them heal themselves from stress, fear, triggers to past trauma; and group sessions on stress management. Second, we provide economic support: We assign each woman a staff person who follows her, providing help as needed. We give them jobs – hourly work, sewing and encouraging those who are able to get outside jobs. We have 300-350 women registered; we serve 100-150 per month. Now, [with COVID] we have a waiting list. Our staff includes both Israelis and asylum seekers
How did the COVID pandemic affect your clients and your work?
With the COVID lockdown, people can’t go to work, so the needs of women have increased a lot. Before COVID, we took every woman seeking help; now we have a waiting list. It is very expensive to live in Tel Aviv. We help with rent money to prevent evictions. Being so closely crowded in one room, because no one is working, has triggered PTSD from horrendous Sinai experiences. They also fear COVID: “If I get sick, what will happen to me?”
We follow women psychologically to help them heal themselves. We set up a crisis hotline. Our volunteers deliver materials, [donated] food and vouchers to women. But we have not been able to sell as many products as the women produce because of the lockdown, so the women earn less. Adding online sales has helped a great deal. Women tell us that without us, they would be out on the street.
Some are just now getting vaccinated. [Asylum seekers are not eligible for government health care and the government has provided only limited access to the COVID vaccine].
Tell us about your project with HATD
HATD funding enabled us to hire more staff to provide more psychological support, enabled us to provide stress management, and taught us different approaches, such as storytelling. HATD is helping to evaluate and to see our work more broadly.
Do you have a story that demonstrates what the project is doing?
A husband brought his wife, who was pregnant and out of her mind, lost. She could not speak. We encouraged her to come every day, coordinating with her psychiatric team. She sat with us, we spoke to her about life at home, asked how she’s doing. I counseled her on having hope. When she gave birth, we paid people to be with her, bought vouchers [for support]. One year later, she is a different person. She is caring for her family. She comes on her own. Recently, she brought us food she cooked.
Images courtesy of Kuchinate
