Students from the Hadar neighborhood work as part of an exciting project for the needy, and they do it wholeheartedly!
"The "Hadar HaHarmel Student Village" is a scholarship program intended for students living in the Hadar neighborhood in Haifa. The students are involved in the diverse community of the neighborhood, and contribute their time and energy to the benefit of its residents. For the winter and during the holidays, for example, the students went to visit the homes of lonely elderly residents of the neighborhood and gave them gifts that would make their hearts happy.
The Hadar Student Village is a project that operates in collaboration with the Hadar community, the Lottery, the Farah program, Witzo College and the Haifa Municipality, and its goal is to take care of people who need social support, to help reduce social gaps in the neighborhood and to promote its development and prosperity, through activities and actions in various fields. Some of the students specialize in psychology and social work. In addition to their fields of study, the participants go through advertising and marketing workshops, meetings with those in charge of elderly groups and other events.

meet the needs of the residents of the neighborhood
Yael A-Dor, the director of the program, says that the student village opened its 15th year of activity in the neighborhood last October, with 27 students living there. The program is divided into projects in various fields, where students can choose to participate in personal mentoring, accompanying elderly people and Holocaust survivors, training and accompaniment at the youth center, the youth center and the women's courtyard.

A-Dor says:
We work in close cooperation with welfare and Parah and try to meet the needs of the neighborhood, in combination with the abilities and desires of the students. We place them in the various frameworks and they receive close supervision from the village team, which also consists of scholars already in their second or third year in the village.
"just do"
One of the project groups is called "Just Doing". The group accompanies the elderly and has two teams that deal, among other things, with visits to kindergartens, schools, visiting the homes of lonely elderly people and Holocaust survivors, or assisting other students living in the neighborhood.
As part of the social involvement, the students organize various activities To improve and enrich the lives of the elderly and pensioners living in Hadar. First, they make connections with various bodies that can help them, such as welfare, the municipality, Lev Hash Association and more and work together with them to help in any matter possible. Also, the participants visit the elderly many times, host them with company and give them sweet and indulgent gifts.
These days they aim to establish a group of retirees and organize social activities, workshops for them and above all to create a human framework for them that will provide them with a social life that they often lack, and even more so during the Corona period, when social distancing is imposed on everyone and especially on the elderly.
Activity during the winter holidays
On the Hanukkah holiday, all groups of the village went out for a Hanukkah Eve activity for the pensioners living in Hed. A party for the elderly called "Hanochrisans" was established. On the Russian holiday of Rosh Hashanah, gifts were distributed to Russian elderly people. The amount of students from the village who participated in the project was not enough, so they prepared a registration form for the activity, distributed it in the streets and posted it on Facebook.
As a result of this call, donations were collected from various stores in the neighborhood and students joined together with volunteers. For example, the request was answered by students from the youth village on Masada Street. As part of the scholarship, the students help 11th and 12th graders from the village with their homework. This time the boys helped the students pack the collected equipment.
For the sake of the distribution, welfare was helped to get from them a list of those who need assistance in the neighborhood. All the visits were to people who were also visited in previous years, according to the welfare lists, but some of them expressed reservations this year due to their fear of the spread of the corona virus and very regretfully gave up the physical visit.
As part of the project, the students and volunteers were divided into pairs and thus arrived at the home of the elderly. Some were Russian and some Israeli. The scholarship management tried to arrange the pairs so that each one would be a student or a volunteer who speaks Russian for the reason that most of the pensioners only spoke Russian.

Yana Voronkova, a student at the Witzo College of Visual Communication, only met Liel, her visiting partner, when they arrived at the home of the elderly woman with whom they met. The volunteer Liel came from the center of the country for this purpose, when she heard about the project she felt a great desire to take part in it.
Yana Voronkova about the visit:
We visited a 90-year-old woman who lives alone without the support of family and friends, she is alone in the country and has difficulty walking. As part of the visit, we gave her a sweet gift and attention, we entertained her and felt that our visit made her very happy.

Yana and her partners in the activity have already received several phone calls from the donors, who thanked them excitedly for the warm and joyful visits.
The next project - "The memories and the story of my life"
At the same time as the distribution of the gifts, Yana prepared flyers with the aim of inviting the elderly to the next activity organized by the students. The flyers are designed to contact her and other students when necessary. Also, and to invite the donors to participate in the next project, "The memories and the story of my life", which is now in the process of becoming, and within the framework of which the elderly will get to know each other, create connections and friendships and engage in diverse activities, such as painting, conversations on various topics, reading books and other hobbies.
Russian speakers of the third age living in Hadar - welcome to get in touch and participate!
The meetings will be held starting in February at the Hadar Club, 29 Jerusalem Street.
The first meeting in the "Memories and Stories of My Life" project will be delivered in Russian and will take place on 1/2/22 between 16:30-18:00 p.m.

Participation is free of charge and with advance registration - seniors from the Hadar neighborhood and Russian speakers are welcome!
For more details and to register, call Yana Voronkova - the project organizer
Tel. - 0533202511