After Oct. 7, spirits were broken and communities in the Gaza Envelope region were left reeling—families shattered and neighborhoods destroyed. Amid the deaths, separations and evacuations, something else was lost: a sense of community. For 18 months, CJP’s response to devastated communities in Israel’s South has grown from one—an initial emergency investment in Kibbutz Re’im—to now supporting 54 communities through an expanded partnership called Project Horizon.
The work began the first week of war, with CJP’s $1 million emergency grant to Kibbutz Re’im and 450 of its surviving residents evacuated and displaced in hotels. CJP’s funds enabled the relocation of all kibbutz survivors from those hotels into two high-rise apartment buildings in the Florentin section of southern Tel Aviv. The immediate funding response kept Kibbutz Re’im intact and buoyed core services through a critical period of recovery, such as mental health, community building and resilience, informal education and employment solutions.
Understanding the need across the most impacted communities in the South, CJP joined as a founding partner in Project Horizon, an effort created by members of the Israel Business Alliance—150 civic-minded Israeli business leaders and UJA-Federation of New York. Working together, CJP could identify even more areas of need and key players on the ground in Israel to provide crisis support on the community level. The goal was to meet evacuated communities where they were: keep them together until it was safe to come home, and when ready, facilitate their return.
What first started with a focus on the 12 most impacted kibbutzim near the Gaza Envelope has grown to emergency support of 54 kibbutzim and moshavim through the Project Horizon platform. Working in close collaboration with UJA-Federation of New York, the project has raised and deployed $17 million to bolster long-term recovery and empower local leaders to advocate for their communities. Nearly 120,000 residents are impacted by this wartime philanthropic partnership.
“We needed to make sure that our brothers and sisters in Israel felt our support every step of the way,” says Sarah Abramson, CJP’s executive vice president of strategy and impact. “The Project Horizon platform is built for ongoing support: We’re saying that we’re here to help with the employment needs, resilience needs, education infrastructure—the things they depend on to come back and live a full life. And we’re with them not once, but forever.”
Community organizer Shay Ilan is another instrumental partner in Project Horizon. “This is a unique project that brings philanthropy, business and social movements together to support communities,” he says.
On the ground in Israel’s South, the community-building project is coordinated by Tozeret Haaretz, which fields requests, ensuring impact that reflects the true needs of survivors. Ilan serves as a “messenger” of sorts, connecting with communities on the ground to prioritize their needs and conveying them to Project Horizon.
Communities are invited to submit proposals for projects pertaining to community resilience, mental health (trauma care), informal education and employment.
“This project is especially unusual because the idea here is that each community is centered, because they know best what they need,” Ilan explains.
The Stage Three expansion is essential, he says, encompassing even more communities, including those not currently supported by the Israeli government, as well as autonomous moshavim that needed significant assistance due to a lack of built-in community support structures.
The funding has offered something intangible but essential: hope. For example, in Nahal Oz, on the edge of the Gaza border fence, 15 residents were killed out of their tight-knit 430 community; eight others were taken hostage. The community currently resides in Mishmar Ha’emek and Netivot and won’t return home until the end of 2025. The displacement was jarring; community ties were frayed.
The project committed $900,000 to build community-based activities, such as more than 45 trips and activities for seniors who were moved to an assisted living facility in Bat Yam. There is now babysitting for parents and one-on-one support for kids whose loved ones were kidnapped; Israel Defense Forces soldiers received crisis support focusing on coping skills at war; and 20 young adults joined an overnight healing retreat in Golan.
On Yom Hazikaron, an exhibition honoring each murdered resident drew 1,000 people to pay their respects, along with a short film illuminating each life lost. A memorial gathering, attended by 550 kibbutz members and their families, included songs picked by each family to remember their loved ones, followed by a community dinner. This was the first time the community gathered since Oct. 7. It was symbolic and cathartic.
Education is also a priority: This includes summer programming and camps for kids; a special cycling program for evacuated children to build confidence and ambition; therapeutic horseback riding and surfing for kids and teens who, though displaced, should still feel at home in their own skin and enjoy some sense of normalcy.
Just as important as these activities, though, is the sense of control offered by Project Horizon to each resident, because they play a part in choosing which community-building events make the most sense for their circumstances after so much time feeling powerless.
“After Oct. 7, most residents felt as if other people were taking control from them. They evacuated to a place that the government chose. Now, we can tell them, ‘You take control. You have a budget, and you choose how to spend it,’” Ilan says.
Another unique way that funding has improved Israeli lives involves mental health care for men, a segment of the population that Ilan acknowledges is traditionally resistant to vulnerability.
“This was amazing: We get a lot of requests for group sessions for men. It’s not easy for a man to do this treatment, especially in this area, for men to process what happened during this terrible disaster,” he says. The programs have been well-received and shattered mental health care stigma.
The project also had significant transformative effects for moshavim, Ilan says, who until Oct. 7 operated independently and lacked a structural community framework. Seeing how Project Horizon’s community interventions benefited so many, they began to open themselves up to change.
“After Oct. 7, they actually changed the way they think, because they understand the power of community, the power of being together,” Ilan says. Many began to form kibbutz-style communal frameworks with Project Horizon’s support, including a course for community leaders to show how to sustain this growth even after funding ends.
“We want to give them the knowledge and the ability to create communities for the long term,” Ilan says, even after the funding ceases.
Most of all, Ilan says, “I want everyone to understand that this funding support changed reality for people. This is more than budgets: This project allowed us to sit with communities, believe communities—and when we give them the trust, and give them the possibility to choose, they create amazing things. It’s very emotional.”
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