How children learn to smile again

At first, many of the children do not draw people.

The art therapists told us this is common after what they lived through. The first drawings are houses with heavy black lines around them. Skies colored red. Empty rooms. A therapist sits beside a seven-year-old, says nothing, and hands over another sheet of paper. And another. For weeks.

Then one day — a sun in the corner of the page. A dog. A stick figure holding another stick figure's hand.

That is what healing looks like when you are seven. It arrives in crayon.

What the healing programs do

The children and families program funds long-term, professional care — not a one-time activity, but a steady presence in a child's life:

• Art and play therapy, where feelings too big for words can come out safely
• Group programs, because a child who thinks "only I am broken" heals faster among children who understand
• Support for parents and caregivers — including grandparents raising grandchildren — who are holding their own grief while holding a child's
• Summer camps and respite weekends that give children permission to simply be children again

The sound we work for

A program director told us about the moment she knew the summer camp was working. It was not a speech or a milestone. It was noise — the ordinary, chaotic, wonderful noise of children shouting over each other at a swimming pool.

"For ten months I had seen these kids silent," she said. "You cannot imagine what screaming children sound like to me now. It sounds like life."

Give a child a longer road

Trauma care is not quick, and it is not cheap. It is also the single most important investment in Israel's future that we know of — because these children will grow up, and what we do now decides what they carry with them.

Donate now — and help a child find their way back to the sun in the corner of the page.