The Jewish Federation Connecting with Community presents "Growing Up in the Beit Singer Children's Home" featuring speakers from the Afula Gilboa region of Israel.
Join us for an up-close and personal story of how our local dollars invested in the Southern New England Consortium (SNEC) partnership with the Afula Gilboa region are affecting change in the lives of at-risk children in Israel. Yochai Booganim and Noy De Grazia will be joined by Ariel Rakovsky, associate director of Beit Singer, to share their personal stories and the life-changing experience of growing up in the Beit Singer Children's Home.
Beit Singer, located in K'far Yehezkel just outside of Afula in the Gilboa region, provides a home to at-risk youth who have suffered abandonment, neglect, and abuse from an early age. The children are organized into small, intimate groups where they receive intensive attention from a range of professionals including educational staff, social workers, and psychologists, along with movement, art, and animal therapists.
Due to the large intake of young students over the years, the SNEC partnership support has helped Beit Singer add extra hours of psychotherapy and additional social workers, in order to better address the emotional and educational needs of those traumatized by being removed from home. More recently, partnership funding was used to develop an animal therapy program where therapists pair the children with an animal that can be a source of comfort and help them learn to love and trust again.
This free program is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community Series and will be followed by a kosher hot lunch. Lunch is a $2 suggested donation for adults over 60 years of age or $7 for all others. Advance reservations are required for lunch and can be made by calling (413) 442-2200 before 9 a.m. on the day of the program.