The Covenant Grants

MATAN: The Gift of Jewish Learning for Every Child

Organization: Matan, New York, NY

Grant Year: 2001

Project Director: Meredith Englander

Type of Grant: Signature

Grant Amount: $135,000 (3 years)

Website: https://matankids.org/

Covenant Classroom
Inclusion
Professional Development

Project Description
The grant supported MATAN, an organization working to make Jewish education more accessible to children with special needs. The goal was to help congregational schools in New York City to evaluate how they were educating their students and to understand why they weren’t successfully reaching students with learning differences. Where institutional deficiencies were observed, MATAN worked with the schools to identify the underlying issues and to help increase educational accessibility.

Participants
Children with special needs, educators, and education directors within congregational schools in New York City.

Results/Impact
MATAN helped the schools to develop and implement accessibility strategies and, in selected cases, to develop self-contained programs specifically for children with special needs.

Current Status
MATAN has been running for over a decade and has decided to make some changes intended to increase its impact. The organization is now moving away from direct service to focus on training rabbis, educators, education directors, rabbinical students, and graduate students to expand the Jewish community’s capacity to effectively educate children with special needs. Plans to create a conference and/or workshops to train educators are underway. Another significant change has been the implementation of a three-year exit strategy for school-based interventions. Previously, MATAN would support a school year-after-year; at this time, however, three-year engagement agreements are being created. At the end of the three years, the school is expected to have reached the point of hiring a special educator or to have accessibility ingrained in its organizational culture. MATAN has also expanded its online presence to become a hub for Jewish special education resources. The organization recently launched the first searchable online database for special needs programs in the United States.

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