A native Londoner, who has been the guiding spirit behind ESRA’s Parents of Children with Mild Learning Disability group, this week won one of the organization’s top awards. Judith Schwarcz is president of the Support Group: Parents of Learning Disabled Children, which hosts lectures on learning disabilities and provides a support network. Other services offered include a mobile library and a hotline service that Schwarcz runs herself. Since taking over as president a year ago, she has seen the organization grow from 40 to 180 members. “This award is also a recognition for children we are helping. The more learning disabilities are spoken about and recognized, the more can be done to help these children and their parents,” she told Anglo File. Schwarcz has been living in Israel since 1976 and has been involved with ESRA (English-speaking Residents Association) for many years. Her interest in helping parents whose children have learning disabilities stems from her own and her children’s dyslexia.

At this year’s annual ESRA volunteer event (due to be held on Tuesday evening), several outstanding volunteers were to be honored for their work in the community. As well as the award to Judith Schwarcz, eight other outstanding volunteer awards and a number of citations for various ESRA groups and affiliates were to be given out. Among the winners were the Hadar Garden club and the Esravision community television team.

Prof. Gerald Esterson was honored for his work creating and building ESRA’s website. The web site describes all of the ESRA activities and has a list of relevant links for the English-speaking community. Esterson, a retired professor of applied chemistry at Hebrew University, who moved to Ra’anana three years ago, has updated the organization’s computer infrastructure and built the web site.

A.L.