Israel Emergency Relief Fund for HaOgen for Drafted Families

As Israel faces an ongoing war, its brave reservists are still out on the front lines, leaving their families – mostly mothers with young children – to navigate daily challenges alone while dealing with immense anxiety. These reservist families carry a heavy burden, and we can’t allow them to carry it alone – we have a communal responsibility to stand with them and support them. HaOgen for Reservist Families is strategically based in local communities, adapting quickly to changing circumstances, to provide immediate, crucial support where it’s needed most. Our support also allows Israel’s reservists and career military soldiers to focus on their mission with peace of mind, worrying less about their families back home.  
HaOgen (in Hebrew: עוגן, literally “anchor”) is a nationwide network of volunteers providing essential, practical, and emotional support to 35,000 reservist families across over 800 communities.  
Your support makes an immediate impact! As the war continues, more and more reservists continue to be called up, and the needs of their families grow. HaOgen must expand in kind to meet their needs. Your contribution directly addresses the most urgent and evolving needs of these families: 

• Meals: HaOgen’s volunteer cooks and drivers have been supplying meals to reservist families for nearly two years. Several times throughout the year we also provide families with meals, coupons, or food packages from various restaurants and cafes. These meals ease the daily burden of reservist families and provide essential sustenance and comfort.
• Daily Support: Our volunteers provide critical household assistance, including babysitting, running errands, walking the dog, or even taking out the trash – easing the overwhelming load on single parents while their spouse is in reserve duty. We are the extra pair of hands missing from these families to help take care of their homes. 
• Holiday Hugs: Around 8 times a year, planned around the holidays, we organize care packages and events for the reservist families to show our support and solidarity. One of the most difficult aspects of being a reservist family is feeling alone in this situation – and we don’t want any of these families to feel alone! We bring them a sense of community, connection, and care. 
• Children’s Activities & Care: In addition to helping with babysitters/childcare for these families, we also offer targeted support for the children of these families. Our volunteers help with homework and organize events for children. We are in touch with schools about supportive policies for these children in coordination with professional child psychologists. We also coordinate kaytanot (camps) and activities for children in the summer.
• Meeting Evolving Needs: HaOgen continues to evolve to meet the needs of reservist families. For example, during Operation Rising Lion, we developed a broad Zoom program. For children, we had a Zoom session with a different activity each day – an illustration lesson, a science experiment, a magic show, etc. – meant to keep them engaged while school and after-school activities were all cancelled. For parents and for volunteers, we held Zoom sessions on resilience and ways to cope under the challenging circumstances as well as holding some fun, stress-busting lessons like salsa dancing.