The October 7 attack has deeply affected each one of us. Many of our campus faculty, students, and staff have been drafted, and some of us have lost family and friends. One of our flagship science-education programs, in which high school graduates volunteer with school students in the Israeli southern town of Ofakim for one year prior to their mandatory army service, has been severely affected: Its participants were evacuated from the city, and 32 of its graduates, who were having a "shabbat holiday together" at the program location during the attack, were stranded in the saferooms for some 30 hours before they were rescued and able to get to safety.
While we are grieving over the ongoing situation in Israel, we are making efforts to help out in the home front and offer support to families, soldiers, children, and youth, who are in desperate need of relief and routine. On campus, we do our best to keep pushing scientific research forward despite the absence of many students and scientists currently on reserve duty and postdocs who have left Israel and will hopefully return when the situation allows.
The Weizmann Institute has undertaken to lead various wartime programs to address emergency needs. As these had not been planned and budgeted in advance, funding needs are growing. Our areas of action include the following:
- Teaching school students all over the country, including Dimona, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea region, and war-affected areas bordering the Gaza Strip
- Training IDF soldiers serving in the Education and Youth Corps to provide an educational framework for around 1000 children who have lost their homes and schools
- Organizing hands-on science activities for school students of all ages in evacuee centers to strengthen resilience
- Conducting in-person and remote learning sessions for school students in shelters in areas suffering from intensive rocket attacks
- Providing lodging for the Ofakim program participants at Weizmann’s youth village
- Running the Ofakim science education program, which has been evacuated, in other locations all over the country
- Working with special-needs youth
- Helping out with essential tasks in evacuee centers and assistinghosting municipalities
- Preparing bomb shelters for residents of various communities and teaching science in hotels hosting evacuees
The demand for our wartime programs is constantly growing, with municipalities in both war-affected areas and absorbing regions requesting our support at their locations. As the war continues, addressing these needs requires resources of an unprecedented scale.
To address the growing needs, the teams of the Davidson Institute of Science Education are spread all over the country, training local educational staff and IDF Education and Youth Corps soldiers, providing pedagogical content, and working with kindergarten and school children of all ages who have lost their homes, communities, and schools. Your support will enable us to continue providing our crucial help to all those in need.