After School Tennis and Homework Clubs

Our flagship project is running since 2000 an after-school program to the underprivileged Arab villages of Jisr a Zarqa, where FKI has improved school enrollment and attendance rates for participating youth. In Jisr a-Zarqa, students who have taken part in our programs maintained a high attendance rate in school, with many going on to higher education. In 2018 six tennis graduates returned to Jisr after completing medical studies aboard.

Each year groups of Arab Israeli children in the village of Jisr a –Zarqa, Faradis, and Ein Hawd aged 5-16, are trained twice weekly for 45 minutes by a dedicated team of pro coaches.   Helping adapt to the broader society:   It is an almost unsurmountable challenge for Arab children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to embark on a profession, to access higher education or even to take part in shared society and cultural activities. Children who lack self-esteem, and who have never socialized with Jewish Israelis, have no way of learning how to adapt and take an active part in society.  To help remedy this, in addition to frequent shared society activities with Jewish children, the FKI afternoon clubs bring volunteers to play with the children and improve reading, writing and conversation skills in both Hebrew and English in addition to their sports and tennis training.

The group also takes part in inter-club tournaments with other Arab and Jewish local tennis clubs.

The focus of this program is on the development of societal skills – developing an understanding of the resources and actions needed to create situations to achieve one’s goals (e.g., hard work, cooperation, building relationships, accepting and nurturing support).