The Children's Program aims to provide a high-quality supportive and recreational framework during morning, afternoon and school vacations for children who temporarily reside in the Shelter; to partially relieve the mothers from the care of their children, allowing them to rest, start a healing process and administer their lives; to provide mothers with parenting skills; to provide children with models of non-violent communication patterns; to process the post trauma of children; to diagnose and improve learning and behavioral disorders; to advocate and raise consciousness regarding the subject of child abuse among professionals and lay leaders; to integrate children into the community (i.e. schools, special kindergartens, etc.); to expose children to various enriching experiences; to unite children who did not manage to flee with their mothers to the shelter with their mothers.
The children who reside in our Shelter have witnessed and experienced ongoing violence and are in dire need of support and therapy in order to learn to heal and to learn to live with their traumatic memories. Treatment is crucial, as a means of breaking the cycle of violence, which often occurs when children who were victims/survivors of violence become adults, and in turn, inflict violence on their own offspring or spouses or marry violent spouses.
Moreover, children at risk suffer in most cases from learning and developmental disorders (including emotional and behavioral disorders) that make their integration into educational institutions all the more challenging, intensify their distress and reduce their ability to acquire self-esteem and positive experiences.
The children and mothers who participate in the program benefit by obtaining tools for coping with the trauma that they have suffered and by having the opportunity to develop positive relationships and practice healthy communication and life skills.
The Shelter provides the project's services to 40-75 children with their mothers every year.
The project's main components are: therapy for every child; parenting training; running a kindergarten at the Shelter; running a learning center; activities in the afternoon for pleasure and enrichment; special activities and trips; summer and holiday camps; solicitation, buying, and distribution of educational materials, activity supplies, games, books, tapes, toys, and children's clothing throughout the year; developmental and psychological diagnosis; directing children with special needs to appropriate educational structures outside the Shelter; attempting to unite the children who did not manage to flee with their mothers to the Shelter, with their mothers; staff supervision.