Haifa presents: Life coaching service for residents
Municipality promotes experimental project which provides life coaching services aimed at overcoming poverty for families with financial difficulties
"Our role is to give people fishing rods instead of fish and to teach them to do things on their own," explains life coach Yael Sela. "When we provide them with welfare services we invariably leave them in the needy status. Through coaching, we provide them with tools to stand on their own feet."
The municipality first held a test pilot for the program, which included five families with a history of financial and other difficulties. The families were assigned a personal coach from the Israeli "Sdot Israel" coaching center, which held weekly meetings with them, each lasting an hour and a half. The sessions are funded by the municipality and welfare services.
"The collaboration is aimed at helping families find the solutions, means and strengths to embark on a new path from within themselves," notes Meira Kiperman, project manager with the municipal welfare department.
Organizing lives
"The coach taught me how to handle myself financially and also how to organize my life," says S., a 37-year-old mother of three from Haifa. "After each coaching session I felt an improvement, and I can only regret not having taken a life coach 10 years ago. My life would have been different."
S. was the subject of domestic violence on the part of her husband and at one point escaped to a battered women's center with her children. She later became independent, but had difficulties providing for her children on her income as a housekeeper.
"At first, I kept telling the coach that this is my destiny and that this is how it will remain. She didn’t accept this and convinced me that I could do things and change my life around. I underwent 12 coaching sessions and felt myself drawn to the things she taught me," S. related.
Yael Sela, her coach, said, "We focus on the here, now and onwards. We work under the assumption that each person has strengths and weaknesses with which they can develop, move forward and affect change."
