Over the past 10 months, Hen Cohen, project coordinator at Habaita (Homeward), has become acutely aware of the loss of routine, control, and agency experienced by the nearly 160,000 people internally displaced after Oct. 7. She’s seen it firsthand in the thousands of children she’s worked with since the attacks—especially teens.
“They were not in their homes, they didn’t have their privacy, they weren’t with their friends, they didn’t have structure, and they were having traumatic thoughts about what happened,” Cohen says.
There were attempts to create schools for the displaced at the hotels where they were staying, but the efforts were often spotty, with very high rates of absenteeism.
Adults were seeing an increase in underage drinking, drug use and other risky behaviors, and, very often, children didn’t even want to leave their rooms. They needed a return to the familiar, their peers, and some semblance of normalcy.
However, encouraging displaced families to move back home* after trauma was a challenge of its own: They had lost trust in the government, the protection of the military, and even outsiders.
“In March, we did a survey of 350 families from the Western Negev and Galilee that were displaced and had school-aged children, and we found out two very interesting things,” says Izhar Armony, a Boston-based social entrepreneur driving Habaita’s work forward. “The first was that 30%–40% may not go back to their original communities, and that is devastating—a disaster. We think of this as an existential threat to Zionism because if you lose Galilee, if you lose Negev, the country just shrinks. It was a big, big problem.”
The second finding? When survey participants were presented with the idea of an improved education system, an amazing 83% of citizens stated that they would be willing to return.
“We knew we had to help them believe in their home,” Cohen says.
With the hopes of building up the education system, reconnecting the community, and bringing the displaced back home, Habaita was born. But developing these systems and implementing these goals required time and planning, and thousands of children needed help immediately.
Habaita was up for the task.
Within four months, Habaita’s “Summer of Tkuma”—an innovative summer camp program for students in fourth through 12th grades—was developed in response to the crisis. (Tkuma, which means “rebirth,” is the name of the government administration that was set up to help facilitate the return of citizens to the Western Negev.) Backed by funding from the Tkuma Authority, the Jewish Federation of New York, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Boustan Foundation, and a $500,000 grant from CJP’s Israel Emergency Fund, the six-week program launched on July 1 is accommodating nearly 11,000 children and is, according to Izhar, off to “an awesome start.”
Through the summer camp, children can reconnect with their schoolmates and teachers, engage in learning, play games, run barefoot in the grass, and just be kids again. Teenagers have activities ranging from taking courses in English and mathematics to skill-building classes, like learning how to cut hair or cooking. In the evening, teens can hang out in spaces designed just for them, equipped with bean bag chairs, TVs, and ping-pong tables, where they can chat with social workers or spend time with their peers.
“It’s just heartwarming to be there and see those lawns that had been deserted for nine months filled with kids jumping, shouting, and having fun,” Cohen says. “And the most amazing thing is that it’s giving teens something to do.”
“CJP was the first federation to believe in what we were trying to accomplish,” Armony says. “As in being first to invest in the Kibbutz Re’im project and Project Horizon, CJP is unafraid of looking into totally new, innovative concepts, and if they think the potential is there, they will lead the way with a first philanthropic check.”
Habaita’s goal for the next school year is to recruit, train, and support 400 new teachers and counselors for the north and the south, investing in human capital as well as creating and testing plans to improve education and bring displaced citizens—and attract new individuals and families—back to these areas. In the meantime, Habaita’s summer pilot program is reinvigorating communities that have suffered tremendous loss.
“It really is remarkable,” Armony says. “Just the idea that in four months, we were able to turn this into an effective program that is really making a big difference in people’s lives. But I think beyond that, it will help jumpstart the flywheel that will bring these communities back. It’s rebuilding love and faith—that’s what we’re doing there.”
*Some communities have no choice but to stay displaced for the next one to two years as their kibbutzim were so badly damaged or destroyed.
Support CJP so we can continue meeting the needs of the Jewish community in Greater Boston and abroad.
