Asher Elias had similar motivations and priorities when he established Tech-Career in 2004, a center for training Ethiopians to work in high-tech. He sees employment as the key to the full integration. "Of course, employment is tied to education," he said, "but even so, there are over 3,000 university-educated Ethiopian Israelis. That's a huge potential reservoir. The problem is that they are channeled toward lowpaid careers in teaching, social work and nursing. Ethiopians cannot be accepted into the computer science departments of universities and go into high-tech, which is one of the most lucrative areas in the economy, because the academic elite has set criteria in the form of psychometric exams, which our community scores low on." Elias, who gave up his own lucrative career in high-tech to prove that large numbers of fellow Ethiopians do have the potential to make it in the advanced technology sector, set up Tech-Career together with American immigrant Glen Stein, who was involved with a U.S. project called Byte Back, which trained the disadvantaged for work in high-tech. Based in Kibbutz Nachshon, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, TechCareer offers a year-long intensive program for high school graduates from the Ethiopian Israeli community. In the first year, nine of 15 students graduated the course and found work in high-tech, while in the second course (still running) nine students began and six remain. Benjamin Melko, 26, a graduate of the first Tech-Career class, joined a high-tech company as an Internet site developer. Today, he earns a salary far higher than his previous job as a security guard. "I immigrated to Israel at the age of 4 with my mother. My father stayed in Ethiopia," he said. "I wanted to go to university, but I knew that in order to live I'd need to work at random jobs and that it would affect my studies. I heard about the Tech-Career project and decided to join. It's one of the smartest decisions I ever made. I still haven't given up the dream of going to university, but right now, with the salary I'm earning, it will be easier for me to finance my studies." A recent Jewish Agency for Israel campaign to celebrate 30 years of Ethiopian immigration has emphasized this type of success. Ads have focused on Ethiopian immigrants like Maj. Shlomi Vicha, an Israel Defense Forces company commander who reached Israel as a young child, and Shlomo Molla, the former head of the Jewish Agency's Ethiopian immigration and absorption department, who just missed out in March on becoming a Knesset member in the Kadima Party. "We want the Israeli public to have a positive image of our community," says Dessie, "and our own people to have role models. But let's not lose sight of the fact that most Ethiopian Israelis are not succeeding." The statistics do not bode well. According to the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, more than 50 percent of the community lives beneath the poverty line and almost all who are employed have menial jobs. The good news, however, is that more than 50 percent of the Ethiopian Israeli community is younger than 18 and not yet alienated from Israeli society. Moreover, Israel has a fresh chance with the thousands of immigrants [from Ethiopia]—mainly Falash Mura who converted from Judaism to Christianity in recent generations and are converting back upon reaching Israel—have immigrated in the past few years.
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