Dalalin Destau is only 16 years old, but he has already experienced more hardship and loss than some people do in a lifetime. Born in a village near Gondar, Ethiopia, Dalalin lost both of his parents as a small child. After that, he went to live with his grandmother and after she passed away as well, he moved in with an aunt and later with an uncle who wasn’t much older than him.
Even at a young age, Dalalin dreamed of making aliyah to Israel, particularly to Jerusalem—and when he was 12, that dream came true. After spending time at an absorption center in northern Israel, he decided to look for a boarding school and settled at a youth village in Afula.
“I wanted to build my future,” Dalalin told a local newspaper. “I didn’t want to live in absorption centers, but instead to connect and integrate into Israeli society.”
In the four years he has been in Israel, Dalalin has certainly achieved that goal, and much more. When he enrolled at the AMIT Yehuda Jr. & Sr. High School in Afula, he couldn’t read or write Hebrew. When one of his teachers asked who wants to run for student council, he raised his hand after seeing some classmates do the same. He was chosen to be on the council, and a year later, he was elected to be the head of it. After that he became head of the Afula municipal student council.
Now fluent in Hebrew thanks to his hard work and the support he received at his AMIT school, Dalalin recently wrote a post on Facebook about his next goal in life: creating an organization that will help other orphans like himself.
“From my experience, life as an orphan is not simple,” he wrote, explaining why he wants to establish such a group. “It is challenging and often the support of parents is missing. We will be their mother and father.”
Dalalin envisions the organization as a youth group with different chapters throughout Israel that will support and aid orphans in grades 1–9. He intends to meet each of them personally.
“It is important for me to give them the feeling that they are not alone,” he said, adding that he has already been contacted by volunteers and professionals, including social workers, who want to enlist for the cause.
In addition, he has already set up a steering committee for his organization, and said he was surprised by the overwhelming response his initiative has received. “Orphans are just like you and me, but they hurt more,” he said. “Giving them emotional support is extremely important.”
Dalalin plans to visit Ethiopia before enlisting in the army, and hopes to find the graves of his parents and grandmother so that he can recite kaddish there. “I want to tell them that I am alive and that I am fulfilling their dreams,” he said.
After the army, where he intends to do significant service, Dalalin aspires to go into Israeli politics. (He’s already met at least one MK, Avraham Neguise, from Likud, pictured above.)
Dalalin is a student with “great inner strength and a great deal of motivation,” Avital Dasa, director of the junior high school, told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “He is incredibly ambitious and will be a future leader in Israel.”
