Children from the Gaza border communities will be eligible to receive a new scholarship for summer camps around Israel according to a statement from the Israel Summer Camp Forum (ISCF).
600 children from all over Israel will receive scholarships for summer camps from the ISCF, with a particular focus on children from the Gaza area.
The announcement came after the end of Operation Shield and Arrow, which disturbed and temporarily displaced dozens of families in the Gaza border area.
The scholarships are designed to help children in need of extra educational assistance in the summer in order to make up for the lost days of education due to fighting.
Children will be able to choose to participate in summer camps all over the country and in particular in the area of their residence.
Connecting different sectors
The Israel Summer Camp Forum runs 40 summer camps across Israel, one of which focus on integrating special needs children and at-risk youth.
All the summer camp programs last for 10 days and include accommodation and require disconnecting from their mobile phones. The disconnecting, according to research by the forum, allows children to have a deeper experience and to connect with other children, whose opinions may be different from their own. It also helps to raise their self-esteem.
Shawna Goodman Sone, founder of the Summer Camps Israel forum, said "The participation of all the youth in Israel in summer camps should be a national strategic ambition. The summer months hold a tremendous potential for personal and social growth for hundreds of thousands of young people, and today it is not sufficiently utilized."