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Location: Center of the city.
As the Hebrew saying goes, the army keeps going on its stomach, and so, the home front keeps going on its resilience. In 2021, a short time after rocket fire began falling on Sderot, the State of Israel understood that it must establish a professional center that will enable the residents of Sderot to cope emotionally with this complicated situation and the challenges it poses. The center offers consultations, guidance, and training for children and families, and enables them to continue with their routine lives to the extent possible in the shadows of the security situation.
Actually, every family in the city is entitled to a basket of 20 sessions at no cost. The center has programs intended for a wide range of ages, from birth to old age, when the emphasis is on work with natural agents – family members, educators, therapists, counselors, etc. – with a work plan tailored to each age group. City employees and professionals such as doctors and dietitians are also helped by this unique center.
The center's models and programs have been validated by research which has been published in the professional literature in Israel and throughout the world. In December 2020, with an investment of close to ILS 4 million from the budgets of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, JNF-USA and JNF of Canada, an animal-assisted therapy center was built. Of course, protected safe spaces were placed on the premises, together with dozens of animals such as turtles, chinchillas, rabbits, snakes, chickens, and even a goat.
Animals enable children to express their emotions by caring for them. In addition, the children gain a sense of responsibility for the animals, and this in turn, empowers them as they draw on their own resources for coping and their feelings of confidence are cultivated – all of which is likely to serve them in times of emergency. The contact with furry animals is comforting and gives back a sense of security, relaxing the nervous system. This treatment has been proven to enable individuals to detach from the sense of loneliness characteristic of the emotional whirlpool that trauma induces.
The Animal-Assisted Therapy Center is a closed campus with two rooms for individual therapy where 210 hours of therapy are conducted weekly, with each of the hundreds of children treated at the center getting one weekly hour of individual therapy. There are also two large, treatment rooms - safe rooms - where groups have classroom sessions.
A therapy petting zoo was actually established in Sderot in 2015, but that earlier, temporary location was too small to accommodate the needs of the community.
How to get there: On Waze, look for The Sderot Animal-Assisted Therapy and Resilience Center.
