Help Preschool Kids with Disabilities in Ashkelon

We are still working hard to raise enough funds to build a state-of-the-art fortified early childhood center for preschool children with disabilities in the rapidly growing and Gaza rocket-vulnerable city of Ashkelon. Because of the war, it is more urgent now than ever before. The Ashkelon building is nearly 60% committed with $2,350,000 left to raise. For donations of a certain size, we will recognize major donors and their designees on the building's walls and rooms.

The new building will replace our current centers, which operate in four inadequately repurposed private homes. The buildings where the children receive services are full of small rooms and many stairs that are extremely difficult to navigate for special children and their cumbersome equipment. The classrooms are overpopulated and children are waiting at home for special needs daycare placements. Some babies are being bussed as far as 40 minutes each way to daycares outside of the city.

Because the houses are unprotected, during the first three months of this conflict when thousands of rockets were hurled into Ashkelon and people have only 30 seconds to get to shelter, the children could not go to daycare and lost significant developmental progress. Because of this, we sent our professionals to their homes once a week to provide cheer and the therapies they needed. However, this approach did not work for everyone and therefore we failed to help everyone designated to be in our care.

An example of this is the story of a preschool girl with disabilities named Amy. Due to Amy’s family situation, we encountered several complicated challenges in getting her the needed services. Initially, Amy disappeared for us during the war. We couldn't reach her parents. It turned out that the mother was alone in the house with her children while her husband, an essential worker, was always at work. In addition to Amy, she had two older sons on the autistic spectrum with very low functionality. The two older brothers reacted very poorly to the confinement, sirens, and explosions. They were urinating and defecating everywhere, shouting and throwing things. The mother was ashamed for anyone to see the state of her home and refused our offer of home visits.

At the same time, we were worried that Amy was not getting the care she needed. She was home for over a month and a half unstimulated while her mother dealt with her brothers’ behavior. We tried to connect her through distance learning on iPads, but since the parents had to be involved in this and her needier brothers were monopolizing her mother’s attention, it was impossible. We asked to send our worker who also has two autistic children, thinking that she would feel more comfortable. The mother would not accept. Amy deserved stimulation, attention, and education, and to receive her paramedical treatments. Had we had the new center, we would have been able to stay open and continue to provide this to her. Please help us build a new fortified early childhood center to enable Chimes Israel to provide uninterrupted high-quality, professional services, treatment, education, and support for hundreds of children with disabilities in Ashkelon for years to come.