("She'Cullo Tov"), A group that specializes in rehabilitation and integration of individuals with mental disabilities in the community, has recently opened, in cooperation with The "Center for Training and Advancement" ("Ha'Mercaz le'Kidum ve'Hahshara") in Baqa-Jatt, a new rehabilitation factory, the first in its kind in the Israeli Arab Community.
The factory combines environment and rehabilitating values. It employs about 40 individuals, ages 18-65, dealing with mental handicaps, entitled for the rehabilitation basket, but are unable to fit in the open market independently.
In the field of mental health, the awareness to the options of rehabilitation and integration in the Arab community in Israel is very low. The is a shortage of rehabilitation programs, and most of the mentally challenged community is left with out a job or a meaningful activity. The factory in Baqa-Jatt gives rehabilitators, that haven't been working over the years and were left out of rehabilitation programs, the opportunity to fit in a productive and equal environment.
In this factory, Arab workers from The Triangle and Jews from Hedera are, for the first time, working together.
The factory has been operating in the past few months. All of the fears and barriers that were in the beginning disappeared. An excellent social bond was created. The workers work in total cooperation, helping each-other, receiving and training new workers. For some of the workers this is the first time coping with an active role in the work market after ten, and even 15, years.
The workers manufacture nets out of recycled paper, designed by Guy Lougashi, a self-taught designer and artist, specializing in designing and sculpting with paper.
While working with paper, Guy discovered a technique of molding paper and producing a specially strong fiber, allowing the production of weaving various kinds of nets, using many different techniques, more stable and reliable.
The work and the product corresponds perfectly with environmental values. The nets in the factory are, on one hand made out of recycled paper and of old paper on the other. its production possesses constitutes re-using and recycling.
In the work program, in the factory, there is a full production process. Starting with the creation of raw material all the way to designing a valuable product, featured to be sold in leading galleries and shops in Israel and around the globe.
The work presses in the weaving factory includes different techniques of cutting, gluing, making different kinds of fibers out of various kinds of paper, weaving baskets, coloring and packaging. Weaving the basket requires the hardest technique of them all, and already seven workers specialize in it, and have gained skills in several branding techniques and formative designing of the braids.
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