July 31, 2008

Shalom!

Nine-year-old Oliya made aliyah from Ethiopia just three years ago with her parents and younger sister. Since arriving in Israel, the family has worked very hard to build a good life for themselves.

In Ethiopia, Oliya and her family lived in a large, close-knit community. “We all helped each other,” Oliya says. “My grandmother would take me to school each morning with my cousins and one of my aunts would pick us up. We had lots of help and we shared the responsibilities.”

When Oliya’s family arrived in Israel, they were overjoyed to be in their biblical homeland. But it was very hard for them to get through their daily life without the help of any extended family. “After we spent a year in the absorption center my father tried to find a job in a bank, but no one would hire him because he didn’t have any schooling in Israel, so he decided to go back to school,” Oliya explained to me. “My mother makes some money cleaning houses but we are hoping that when my father finishes school we won’t be poor anymore.”

When I ask Oliya what the hardest part of being poor is, she answers very quickly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “My friends always come to school with new things and I never got anything new since we came to Israel. My mother gets my clothes and shoes from a secondhand store and they always look old. I am embarrassed to go to school sometimes because I feel so different from the other children.”

But immediately after saying this, she corrects herself. “I do remember one time that I got new things -- before the school year started last year my teacher gave me a beautiful new backpack filled with school supplies and told me that it was from The Fellowship,” she says. “It was the most wonderful day in my life, besides the day that I landed here in Israel. The next day I was excited to go to school instead of embarrassed. I was up all night thanking God for this miracle.”

Oliya’s backpack was provided through an initiative funded by The Fellowship’s Guardians of Israel program that provides new backpacks and school supplies to poor Israeli children. Like so many other Israeli kids, Oliya is deeply grateful for this assistance, which has changed her whole attitude toward school. “Not only did The Fellowship bring me to Israel from Ethiopia -- they also are making me feel good here in the Holy Land,” she says.

Please continue your support of Guardians of Israel by purchasing an item for a poor Israeli child through our Back To School Blessings Catalog. When you do, you’ll be helping to turn school into a time of joy and anticipation – rather than embarrassment and despair – for a needy child.

Yael