The backpack may be new. The classroom certainly will be. There will be unfamiliar names to learn, new routines to follow, and perhaps Hebrew words that still take an extra moment to understand. But when a child who has recently come home to Israel walks through the school gates for the first time, something much bigger than a new school year is beginning. It is another small but meaningful step toward being able to say, “This is home.”
Over the past weeks, you have walked this journey with us through our From Exile to Israel project, helping families who have left behind familiar homes, communities, and entire chapters of their lives to begin again here in Israel. Now backpacks and school supplies are being prepared and children are getting ready to enter their new classrooms. We are incredibly close to reaching every family we hoped to help. Just 20 families remain.
For a family rebuilding life in a new country, preparing children for school can carry a weight that is easy to underestimate. Backpacks, school supplies, and educational needs arrive alongside all the other challenges of establishing a home, finding work, learning new systems, and adjusting to a completely different life.
This is why we began this project.
We wanted these children to arrive at school prepared—not defined by what their families had to leave behind, but able to walk through those doors with the same excitement and anticipation as the children around them. Through the generosity of friends like you, we have already come so far.
Behind that number are twenty homes preparing for an important morning. A parent checking that everything is packed. A child wondering who will sit beside them. New teachers, new classmates, new words, and the nervous excitement of stepping into a place that, little by little, will become familiar.
Perhaps that is what makes this final step so meaningful.
These families have already made the greater journey—from exile to Israel. Now we have the opportunity to help their children take one of those smaller steps that turns arriving somewhere into belonging there.
Would you help us finish what we started? Whether through prayer or a gift toward the remaining need, you can help us reach these final families. $1,000 will allow us to help the remaining 20 families and bring this back-to-school project across the finish line. A gift of any size will make an impact.
Thank you for standing with these families as they build their lives in Israel, and for helping their children begin this new chapter with dignity, confidence, and joy.
They have come home. Now let’s help them begin.
