On June 18, 2023, the Shivat Zion staff was invited to attend an in-service and information session given by the Global Aliyah Center of the Jewish Agency for Israel in their offices in Kiryat Moriah in Jerusalem.
Together with other Aliyah support organizations including the Moetzet Irgunei Olim, Qualita, TELFED and AACI, we learned about the various services offered by the Global Center, learned about some new regulations and gained a better understanding of how the center works, especially the pressure they are under to provide up to date and timely responses to the thousands of requests they receive, especially as Aliyah continues to increase.
One of the more interesting items we learned was that the center is open six days a week from 8:00 – 22:00 in shifts and in an emergency even seven days, supporting 52 phone lines that can be accessed for free from all over the world and provides language support in English, Russian, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Overall the day helped strengthen existing relationships, fostered cooperation and enabled all of us to think about ways to improve inter-agency communication, with the overall goal to provide even better service to Olim everywhere.
