Bar-Ilan University International School’s representatives help us spread the word about Bar-Ilan and recruit potential students. In this article, we learn about Anabella Jaroslavsky and find out what she has been doing to bring the world closer to Bar-Ilan University.
Anabella Jaroslavsky is responsible for connecting with faculty, staff, and potential students at universities and high schools across Latin America. She hails from Venezuela, but made Aliyah (immigrated) to Israel in April 2019, which means she has traveled a lot visiting different countries and communities before COVID-19 turned meetings into virtual reality.
Recently, Anabella has been very active online, opening a Bar-Ilan University Instagram page specifically for Latin America, which is slowly growing in numbers and popularity, and hosting Zoom information sessions.
“I held a very successful Zoom event at the end of July,” Anabella said. “The focus was on young participants of the gap-year Shnat Hachshara (leadership training) Israel program for the Hejalutz Lamerjav youth movement in Latin America.
“I invited two Latin American Bar-Ilan students to the meeting and was happy to discover that the most interesting thing for the participants was the contact with actual students who shared their university experiences and spoke about their degrees, the campus, the International School, and more,” she said.
According to Anabella, most of these 18-19-year-olds were interested in Bar-Ilan’s one-year Mechina (pre-university preparation) program, which enables them to learn Hebrew while studying different courses for later credit towards their degrees.
“This is a wonderful way to make our program known internationally,” she said.
Anabella has also been very involved in connecting with organizations in Latin America in order to promote Bar-Ilan and her Zoom sessions through them.
She connected with the Tnuot Noar youth movement to organize Zoom sessions for their participants who are experiencing their gap-year programs in Israel, and also offered them a visit to the Bar-Ilan University campus in person.
Anabella also spoke with friends in the tourism industry to promote Bar-Ilan University on their Facebook pages; worked with the Jewish Agency’s Aliyah Department to send out information about BIU; and persuaded various institutions with web pages (such as Beit Venezuela) to help her market BIU.
“I’ve seen some good results already,” said Anabella. “Just one example is the Panama family with four children who contacted me about their interest in making Aliyah (immigrating to Israel) and their hopes of studying at Bar-Ilan when they arrive.”
At the end of August, Bar-Ilan University and the Jewish Agency in Argentina organized a Zoom session for about 150 high school students who were being prepared for their psychometric exams. You can watch the recording here (in Spanish).
If you’d like to connect with Anabella or find out more about the events she’s hosting, please email her.
