Ten days after the start of the war and following an intensive needs-based assessment performed by our educational and counseling staff throughout Israel, AMIT Children launched its “Heal the Children” campaign. Immediately, AMIT’s supporters across the United States and Israel responded to the call magnificently, and in a brief time, $2,102,332 was raised from more than 2,000 donors, including more than 500 who were new to AMIT’s work. These funds are over and above AMIT’s significant annual support to the children of Israel.
This funding quickly provided the AMIT Network and its professionals with the means to respond to the crisis in real time, with flexibility, creativity, and measurable impact. Here is the effect of the campaign to date:
Trauma Therapy
Thousands of students (and their families) throughout Israel — especially in frontline communities — are victims of trauma, some of it severe. Knowing that every study shows early intervention for trauma victims leads to the best short- and long-term outcomes and helps avoid PTSD, AMIT instantly reorganized its thousands of teachers to become mentors.
- Mentors were given a crash course in identifying children showing any sign of trauma.
- A psychological hotline was created to give critical guidance to our mentors.
- In daily mentor-led meetings, any student showing a sign of trauma or even suspected of being in need received a minimum of five sessions of therapy.
- To date, hundreds of students are receiving counseling. After 10 sessions, further therapy sessions are also provided.
All of this is being provided at no cost to our students (versus a current wait for therapy via regular channels of three to six months until initial evaluation). The cost to AMIT is $590,000 — each therapy session costs $100 and the staffing of the hotline, $90,000. The battle against trauma will be long and hard, and recovery will take time and effort. Additional funds are being held in reserve to cover costs because we still do not know the scale of the challenge and whether government funding will become available to meet the need.
Learning Centers
With the evacuation of thousands of families from the South and North to hotels and private homes, students, many of whom were traumatized from the first days of the war, were left without structure and purpose. Collaborating with its many partners, AMIT established learning centers in Eilat, the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem for displaced students. Each location carried its own unique and immense logistical challenges, including facility, staffing, programming, and equipment. Staffing of each of these centers required the recruitment and housing of educational professionals, therapists, and national service volunteers. Today, about 1,000 students attend these learning centers across Israel.
The cost of these centers, including the creation/rental of facilities and salaries for staff, is $330,000. While the national service participants are volunteers, AMIT is responsible for their room and board, with a cost of $175,000 projected. Students across the country not staying in evacuation areas were absorbed into existing AMIT schools across the country, necessitating the retention of additional staff.
Day of Respite
Students across the AMIT Network are scattered throughout Israel, losing in-person support from friends. Social media is not an adequate replacement. In response to guidance by our in-house psychological team, AMIT has facilitated mass gatherings of AMIT students from all over Israel in one location. In a safe and relaxing environment, students are given the opportunity to reconnect, unite, and talk face-to-face. Thousands of students have benefited from this type of programming. To date, $210,000 has been spent to provide this important outlet.
Laptops for Sderot Teaching Staff
Among the cities of Israel, Sderot is unique in that AMIT is responsible for the education of all students in the city. At the request of the municipality, and after learning that the “family laptop” was not sufficient for the many users within a family, AMIT sourced and provided 500 laptops to educators from Sderot. $237,000 was spent to provide this vital equipment.
Care Packages/Other Support
In perhaps the most horrible expense (and recognizing that every loss to the people of Israel is tragic), the AMIT family has lost 40 IDF student alumni and faculty during the war, including a hostage taken on the first day. Tangible need-based support is provided in a compassionate, careful, and caring way to each family during the shiva period and in the hard weeks that follow. To date, we have spent $131,000 on these efforts, including the retention of specially trained staff to look after the families long after the initial trauma of the loss.
AMIT was serving the children of Sderot and many other children of the frontline communities before the war and during this horrible time, and we will be there long after everyone goes home. We are committed to this holy mission, and we thank all those who have made this vital ongoing work possible.
