Some suggestions for responding to the humanitarian crises in the current Middle East conflict.
The Education International, representing teachers' unions around the world, has issued an urgent action appeal in support of requests for humanitarian assistance from two Lebanese teachers' unions.
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MeretzUSA recommends three projects in Israel
The Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma at Herzog Hospital is working with residents of northern Israel to help them cope with the current situation of violence and dislocation. The Center’s trauma psychologists are providing trauma counseling to families in shelters throughout the north, as well as workshops for parents and children who have fled northern Israel and have come to Jerusalem. Plans are underway to use the Trauma Center’s website (www.traumaweb.org ) both as a “moderated forum” to help Israelis deal with the psychological impact of the current security situation, and as a “chatroom”, so that people can feel together, even if they are stuck in their separate shelters or safe rooms.
The Brit Olam organization’s “Mobile Summer Camp” is helping children in northern Israel who are confined to bomb shelters this summer due to the current fighting. Many community shelters in the north are run-down, and often the children lack adult supervision. Brit Olam volunteers – including post-traumatic stress experts, educators, storytellers, and professional childcare workers – are going to the shelters, talking and playing with the children, entertaining them and bringing food and toys. In the Arab sector, which lacks community bomb shelters, Brit Olam is working with social service divisions in towns and villages, providing packages of food and toys for distribution to individual homes. Brit Olam (http://www.britolam.org/), in which many Young Meretz people are active, is a social action partnership of Israelis and Jews around the world, working together to reduce poverty, hardship, and vulnerability in fragile communities and to advance equality of opportunity, freedom, and self-expression.
Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport: At the request of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency, Wingate has been housing, feeding and providing summer activities for 200 children from northern Israel – and is seeking to take in 200 more. For general information about Wingate, go to http://www.wingate.org.il/Index.asp?CategoryID=478&ArticleID=661.
Should you wish to contribute to any of these projects, please send us a check made out to Meretz USA, noting in the memo section which of the projects you would like to donate to. They will make sure that the full amount of your contribution goes to the purpose so designated.
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Meretz USA
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