“You can see that they really need you,” says Or Gorodissky who runs two situation rooms for volunteers in the Gimmel and Daled neighborhoods of Beer-Sheva. Gorodissky is part of BGU’s Lillian and Larry Goodman Open Apartments Program, where students live rent free in exchange for volunteering in the community. However, when classes and exams were cancelled, the formal obligations of the Open Apartments Program were suspended as well.
“I felt as though at the point where they needed us the most, we weren’t there,” he says. So he decided to organize his fellow students to help out.
Through the situation rooms, between 40 to 90 volunteers a day spread out through the two neighborhoods offering activities for children in the public shelters. They pay home visits to the elderly, those with special needs, and others just feeling scared and looking for a smiling, friendly face.
“Just by saying you are a student at BGU, you have an instant connection with Beer-Sheva’s residents,” he says.
Prof. Limor Aharonson-Daniel, head of the Department of Emergency Medicine, created a system to manage volunteers during Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012 in conjunction with the Beer-Sheva Municipality. This time around, she immediately activated the system and students have been volunteering throughout the city. The BGU Student Union immediately opened a situation room of its own, working in conjunction with the Municipality and Aharonson-Daniel.
Students have volunteered in hundreds of tasks – from cleaning out public bomb shelters to bringing food to needy families. Paramedics from the Department have helped staff Magen David Adom stations. Special briefings for the deaf have taken place to remind them of what to do in the event of a threat prefaced by a siren they cannot hear. In addition, the PREPARED Center for Emergency Response Research at BGU and the Health Ministry have produced an application that first responders and social workers can use to communicate basic sentences in sign language to offer reassurance and improve initial care.
Members of ASRAN, the medical students union, organized activities for the children of Soroka personnel who were on call to treat wounded soldiers and civilians. Of their own initiative, other students who had moved out for the summer began offering their apartments to the families of wounded soldiers who came down to visit them in the hospital.
“Over the last several weeks, we’ve seen hundreds of students donate their time and abilities who went to different locations in the city to help the residents in this emergency situation. As the head of the Community Involvement Department of the Student Union, I am very proud to be part of a university where the students are really involved in the community, even at this time. I was moved to see the willingness and desire of the many volunteers and the sense of commitment the students feel to this city in which we live,” says Maayan Palti-Negev.
