Our first stop was the Phoebe Leon Welcome Centre, a safe haven for over 80 children half of whom are considered at risk at home.
The centre is open from 7am – 7pm, the children aged from 6 months to 6 years are there to receive three nutritious meals a day and are taught how to interact and have loving relationships.
They receive emotional and educational lessons that their parents are unable to give as well as offering them a home away from home. Many of the parents are single parent families, drug users or new immigrants.
Social workers are on site to provide each family with unique help depending on their needs. What is so special about the centre is that Phoebe Leon gives Jewish and Arab children alike the opportunity to have a life that they would never have had otherwise and is often the last chance they have to live a normal family life.
Seeing this centre in action and its old and very basic facilities made us realise how needed our fundraising is to them.
Emotionally drained we carried on our day at the Rebecca Sieff Centre. We enjoyed a couple of hours doing arts and crafts with 38 5 and 6 year olds. We found them adorable and they had learned to count in English for us. We also discussed the plight of Gilad Shalit with them as today was a solidarity day in his memory. We then sang Lag B’Omer songs together.
The afternoon carried on with some of us choking on the dust as we tried to renovate, rake and weed the garden (at the moment it is like scrubland, we are trying to change that!) as the rest of the group focused on completing our fantastic murals.
After a long day we had a free evening to do as we pleased. Today more Challenges are ahead of us...watch this space!