"Lamerchak" — Employment Guidance for Ethiopian-Israelis in Sderot

What is "Lamerchak"?

"Lamerchak" is a programme for advancing quality employment among Ethiopian-Israelis, founded jointly by Israel's Labour Branch (זרוע העבודה) and JDC Israel. Its stated goal is not simply "find a job" but reaching work that pays a living with a career horizon — work that matches the education and skills you already have.

That framing matters, because it is the problem the programme was built to solve. Per the Labour Branch, employment rates among Ethiopian-Israelis have risen substantially over the years, but many are still employed in jobs that do not match their training, education and experience — which is why average pay in the community remains significantly below the national average.

Each participant is accompanied by a coordinator from a professional team spread across roughly 11-12 localities nationwide.

Who is it for?

Ethiopian-Israelis of working age, with an emphasis on ages 18 to 45, who are not in military / civil / national service and meet one of the following:

• Hold higher education or a professional certificate but work in an unskilled job, and need help moving into work that matches their education
• Are not working, or work in an unskilled job, and are motivated to advance professionally
• Are discharged soldiers

Meeting any one of the three is enough — you do not need all of them.

What you actually get

• A personal career-path plan and one-on-one employment mentoring with a coordinator
• Funding assistance for vocational training courses, tutoring, psychometric-exam prep, English, computing and basic-education courses
• Workshops and courses aimed at the future labour market (e-commerce, for example)
• Preparation workshops for assessment centres and interviews
• Employer relations — access to quality roles at leading companies, and employer-partnered courses that include placement on completion

How to apply

There is no online registration form. The route is to contact the coordinator for your area:

1. Go to the programme's page on the Labour Branch site, which carries a "contact the coordinator nearest you" link.
2. You can also reach out through the programme's national Facebook page.

Note: the coordinator list published on the official page is labelled as the 2020 list. Before relying on a phone number or email address from it, confirm the details are current with the coordinator, or approach your city's youth centre / employment centre instead.

What is not published — and don't believe anyone who says otherwise

The official page carries no stipend amounts, subsistence payments, registration dates or quotas. If you find such figures elsewhere, verify them with a coordinator before planning around them.

Other Labour Branch programmes for Ethiopian-Israelis

The same official page also lists:

• Excellence and Leadership in Employment (with the Olim Beyahad association) — for academics and high achievers, including the "Influencers in the Public Sector", "Mary — Teachers into Management", "Tesa" summer internship and "Ansesh" entrepreneurship tracks
• Hi-tech integration — training run by the Tech-Career association, and the CodeIN programming bootcamp

Source: Labour Branch — Headquarters for Advancing Employment of Special Populations