Looking back on her last three years serving as Nofei Nechemia’s coordinator for youth activities, Racheli Ma’atof considers the youth center now standing at the heart of the community to be the pinnacle accomplishment of her tenure.
“Compared to what we had before, this youth center has changed the whole experience of being a teenager in Nofei Nechemia,” she said. “It was a 180-degree transformation!”
With family routines and structures disrupted over the last few years due to the high number of fathers serving intermittently as reservists in the Israel Defense Forces, youth centers like the one that now stands in the center of Nofei Nechemia, became more important outlets for young people than ever before. In Nofei Nechemia alone, more than 90% of families had at least one family member serving as a reservist during the last three years.
Three years ago, however, Nofei Nechemia had no designated youth center. Racheli’s prefabricated home served as the primary base for local youth activities, making the logistics and planning of each event a significant challenge.
“Whenever the members of the youth center came to my home for regular meetups, my three young children were already sleeping,” Racheli noted.
“Space was very restricted, and with the spare private rooms in our home being off limits, all we had was my three-meter by three-meter living room or my three-meter by six-meter pergola.”
Even more pressing was the rapidly growing number of youths in Nofei Nechemia. Thank God, the community was blessed to welcome many new pioneering families in recent years and, in the process, many more children. Consequently, the number of youths from secondary school through high school tripled.
Despite her unbreakable commitment to Nofei Nechemia’s youth, the growing needs for teenagers in the community simply became too much for Racheli’s home to serve as a viable youth center. Providing the youths of Nofei Nechemia with a new and much more suitable youth center was therefore an absolute necessity. However, the community’s financial resources were very limited. The residents managed to raise enough funds to construct a 90-square-meter structure in the center of the community but had no means to properly furnish it or add essential amenities, including air conditioning, a kitchenette and a projection system.
Never forgetting CFOIC Heartland’s steadfast support for and solidarity with the pioneers of Samaria, the community of Nofei Nechemia knew exactly where to turn, and once again, you responded with extraordinary generosity! Thanks to heartfelt CFOIC Heartland donors like you, Nofei Nechemia’s youths now have a place to call their own “home” away from home. Your gifts provided the means to furnish the youth center with tables, desks, benches and other pieces of furniture, as well as kitchen appliances.
“We didn’t believe we would be able to set up our youth center, but CFOIC Heartland made it happen,” Racheli said.
More importantly, by furnishing Nofei Nechemia’s new youth center, CFOIC Heartland donors played a key role in providing the community’s youth with an environment in which to develop skills, build confidence and strengthen interpersonal bonds.
“The fact that the youths of Nofei Nechemia have a place of their own of which they assume responsibility to clean, decorate, and adorn strengthened their sense of belonging and most importantly, self-responsibility,” Racheli added.
Beyond simply functioning as a center for socializing, the furnishing of the youth center thanks to CFOIC Heartland donors gave Nofei Nechemia’s youth the opportunity at a most crucial juncture in their lives to take ownership of a shared place they can all proudly call their own.
“There is no better time, right on the cusp of young adulthood, for the youth of Nofei Nechemia to grasp such crucial values, and CFOIC Heartland has played a key role in molding the rest of their lives!”
Racheli and the greater community of Nofei Nechemia are deeply moved by the generosity of CFOIC Heartland donors.
“It is truly amazing that we have such close friends who live so far away yet have such a huge heart and care so much about us,” she said.
“May God bless and protect every one of our dear friends!”