The Jewish Agency has recently inaugurated the “Aliya-Tech” program, which is designed to help young immigrants from Ethiopia integrate into the Israeli high-tech industry. The program is launched with the support of the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, the Mandel Foundation, the Friendship Foundation, and the Jewish Federations of North America.
The first cycle will be attended by 25 young immigrants with a high school or academic education, who have immigrated to Israel during the past two years and live in absorption centers throughout the country.
The director of the Ethiopia project at the Jewish Agency, Batamo Yosef, who initiated the program, noted that this is a significant breakthrough in the absorption of immigrants from Ethiopia and added that the training will take place in a boarding school at the Nurit Absorption Center in Be’er Sheva.
The course will last eight months and during it the trainees will participate in an intensive study program that will train them as software testers and then be integrated into employment in the field. The educational content will be delivered by Tech Career, an organization that works to integrate Ethiopians into the high-tech worlds.
Minister of Immigration and Absorption Pnina Tamano Sheta: “Along with the important struggle I am leading in the government to accelerate immigration from Ethiopia, it is also important for me to invest in the optimal absorption of new immigrants from their first day in Israel. To this end, we are starting for the first time together with the Jewish Agency in an automation course at the Absorption Center in Bessarabia.
Yaakov Hagoel, Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Acting Chairman of the Jewish Agency: The high-tech course will enable young people of Ethiopian descent to realize their potential and give them the opportunity to integrate into appropriate employment in the Israeli economy. ”