User:Yanivgr/משתמש:Yanivgr/Madrasa (Organization)

Madrasa (Arabic : مدرسة, "school") or Madrasa - Learn to Communicate is a social, educational, and technological non-profit organization in Israel. It focuses on providing free spoken Arabic education with the goal of fostering communication and understanding between Jewish and Arab communities in Israel.

Madrasa offers free online courses through its website, engaging content and activities on social media, and in-person courses at various organizations throughout Israel.

Currently, more than 180,000 students participate in Madrasa's programs nationwide, with hundreds of volunteers supporting the organization's activities.

Establishment of the Organization
Gilad Sevitt, the founder and professional director of Madrasa, conceived the idea for the organization in 2014. Throughout his school years, military service, and university studies, Sevitt studied Arabic but felt he lacked the opportunity to learn it comprehensively and practically enough to communicate effectively with his surroundings.

After his release from military service, Sevitt began to relearn Arabic independently. The immense joy of being able to converse in Arabic inspired him to share his knowledge. Sevitt started teaching Arabic at home, and following numerous inquiries and requests, he decided to upload the lessons to the internet.

Initially, Madrasa operated through a YouTube channel featuring Arabic teaching videos by Sevitt. As the videos gained thousands of views and became popular among Arabic learners, a Facebook page and an official website were subsequently launched. During this phase, Daniel Dotan, who is now the CEO, joined Sevitt. Meeting through a mutual friend, Dotan decided to assist in setting up the website and Facebook page, leading to the formal establishment of the organization. .

Transition to Online Course Platform
In 2017, the Madrasa team decided to transition their Arabic lessons from YouTube to comprehensive courses designed for independent learning on an advanced online platform. To facilitate this shift, Madrasa launched a successful crowdfunding campaign on Headstart, raising over 170,000 shekels from more than 1,000 supporters.

Madrasa's online courses were built on the Open edX platform, developed by MIT graduates, which supports large-scale online learning. This transition allowed Madrasa to cultivate a learning community that has expanded over the years to more than 100,000 learners.

In 2018, Madrasa's beginner course was added to the government-run Campus IL platform, overseen by the Ministry of Social Equality and the Council for Higher Education. In November 2019, Madrasa launched an intermediate-level course on this online platform, followed by an Arabic alphabet course in December 2020.

Activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic
During the period of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, the organization ran mass online learning campaigns and activities to encourage the learning of Arabic during the lockdowns. On March 12, 2020, with the beginning of the first lockdown, Madrasa launched a mass and free learning campaign for spoken Arabic from home called "Learning Arabic in Isolation".

The campaign featured fourteen consecutive days of guided learning on the online platform and live lessons on social media. It included three learning cycles in total, with around 8,000 participants. Throughout 2020, the organization experienced significant growth, reporting an increase of approximately 10,000 new course registrations compared to March of the previous year.

Social Campaigns, Major Events, and Collaborations
Starting in 2019, Madrasa has launched and participated in multiple social campaigns to make spoken Arabic education accessible to diverse groups across Israel.


 * Spoken Arabic campaign for medical teams - In March 2020, a recruitment campaign was launched in order to establish a special spoken Arabic course for medical teams. As part of the campaign, various social activities took place, such as the distribution of spoken Arabic dialogues in hospitals, videos to raise awareness of the importance of knowing Arabic among medical teams, and free online classes for medical teams. In May of the same year, the madrasah Arabic course for medical staff went live, for the madrasah platform and the IL campus platform. Currently, close to ten thousand learners are registered for the course on both platforms. In 2021, the course entered the list of elective courses in pre-clinical studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.


 * The "Speaking Arabic" project - in February 2020 Madrasah began cooperation with the male and female students' association and the Farah program, in the "Speaking Arabic" project . As part of it, native Arabic-speaking students undergo pedagogical training on behalf of a madrasa and teach spoken Arabic based on the madrasa's online course in dozens of campuses throughout the country.


 * Spoken Arabic and the gay community - cooperation with the "Beit Dror" association - In June 2020, during Pride Month in Israel, Madrasa collaborated with the " Beit Dror " association, as part of which a special video was produced with the aim of raising awareness of the discourse on LGBTQ among the Jewish and Arab community in Israel. The video included important terms among the LGBT community and explanations of the meanings of the terms in Arabic.


 * Spoken Arabic for civil servants - in January 2021 Madrasah launched a mass recruitment campaign for the establishment of an online spoken Arabic course for civil servants. The course is designed to allow Hebrew-speaking employees in offices such as the Ministry of Transportation, National Insurance, the Population Authority, the Income Tax and other government offices to make the government services provided in the offices accessible to Arabic speakers.


 * Cooperation with the Desert Stars Association - In January 2021, Madrasah also began cooperation with the Desert Stars Association, which operates several leadership programs to promote young people in the Bedouin population in the Negev. As part of the cooperation, fellows of the "Desert Stars" undergo pedagogical training and hold practice conversations in spoken Arabic through Zoom software with students from the madrasa community.




 * "Arabic Now" campaign with the Sikky association - In May 2021, in the shadow and under the influence of the riots in Israel, Madrasa launched a joint campaign with the Sikky-Ofok association for equality and partnership, called #Arabic_Now, which led to a mass demand from the Ministry of Education to strengthen and expand the study of spoken Arabic in schools . As part of the campaign, dozens of videos were published on social networks, including personal videos filmed by celebrities such as Kobi Oz, Yaniv Biton, Dana Ivegi, Sasson and Adam Gabai and Esti Zakheim who participated in the call to strengthen the study of spoken Arabic in Israel. By the end of the campaign, about 7500 emails were sent to the Ministry of Education by the community.


 * Cooperation with the Ministry of Environmental Protection - in December 2021, a company seminary for the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the course of making the contents of the Ministry accessible to Arabic, and in joint publications related to protecting the environment.


 * Winning the Sussman-Joint Award - In December 2021, the staff of Madrasa Gilad Sweet, the organization's founder, Daniel Dotan, the organization's CEO, and Michal Rosen, the organization's digital director, won the Sussman-Joint Award for social excellence


 * Project "Ahlan" - In November 2021, the "Ahlan" project was launched in collaboration with the "Administrators Together" program of the Director of Education Jerusalem, the Ministry of Education, the Headquarters for Civic Education and Shared Life, the Jerusalem District of the Ministry of Education and the Civic Education and Shared Life team at MoTH . As part of the Madrasah project, he trained male and female students from East Jerusalem who began teaching spoken Arabic in dozens of elementary and middle schools in Jerusalem, according to a curriculum created by Madrasah. In July 2022, a madrasah launched a recruitment campaign to establish an online learning environment in Arabic for preschool children designed to enable the early acquisition of Arabic and an experiential and authentic encounter with Arabic culture for children starting at the age of three. The learning environment is designed to include interactive games, recorded stories, dramatized scenes, short lessons and songs.




 * Technological collaborations - the madrasa has additional collaborations with IBM and the Technion [12] which include technological developments of learning components for courses and the development of a madrasa application for free Arabic studies.