Ayelet was born and raised in a small, mixed religious/secular community in Israel. For the last ten years, her professional experience focused on developing and deepening social identities, co-existence, and conflict management, as well as community building and development in Israel. 

Ayelet carried out her internship in Nepal, with IsraAID, an international-Israeli nonprofit organization. Her main responsibility focused on the advocacy of the importance of mental health and on ways of addressing the related challenges to local and federal governments. The knowledge base for the advocacy was extracted from another wide and deep project, the “Community Based Psychosocial Capacity Building (CBPCB) Project,” which had been in operation from 2015 to 2018, as a joint effort with three international and local organizations. The CBPCB project was initiated to address the widespread mental health trauma which Nepal was left with, after the earthquake in 2015. 

The project included the use of theatre to promote awareness, building capacity of local community health workers, case-by-case response to needs that arose through implementation, and advocacy to local leaders and government. 

 

In 2015, a horrific earthquake shocked central Nepal, leaving devastation both in human casualties and infrastructures. IsraAID’s response included building shelters, provision of crucial supplies and services, search and rescue operations, medical and post-trauma mental health services. As time passed, it became clear that these needs predated the earthquake. Consequently, IsraAID moved forward to strengthen communities by focusing on the right to mental health acknowledgment and care, and the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of such conditions. Shifting from a needs-based approach to a rights-based approach is a total change of mindset, leading to new ethical challenges and methods of intervention.

 

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