So far this new five day extension to the last cease fire is still holding. We have two more days till it ends and your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen then. Even though things have calmed down and rockets have ceased from being fired at us the threat is still there and will always be.

Hamas is a radical Islamic movement, with a charted that has an express purpose of destroying Israel and establishing on the ruins of the Jewish state an Islamic state, which will go on fighting until it has restored a caliphate in the entire Middle East. It won’t happen in this war or the next, it won’t happen in five years or ten years but they will never stop trying, for that is their sole purpose.

In the mean time we still have our work to do. We still have 450 families to try to help recover from the past thirteen years no less the past forty one days. Even though the rockets have stopped, thing do not just go back to normal with the last rocket being fired or on the morning after the last rocket fired. For some this last war has been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

People have been traumatized again and that same old wound has been opened up again, not that it has ever healed over the past thirteen years. Mothers are afraid still to let their children go out to play and children are still afraid to go outside to play . Some, because of fear stopped going to work and have lost their jobs while others closed their business, sending employees home, others were called up to serve in the IDF. Add this to the already stressed economical situation here in Sderot and it makes our job a bit tougher now as well.

The start of the new school year is just around the corner and at the end of August kids will be heading back to school which for parents means, school books, school supplies, uniforms and tuition and for Hope For Sderot means helping then as well as our school lunch program .

We have given out our last 8 school packs and still have requests for more school supplies and back packs we have not been able to fill yet as well as the request to help with tuition.

Currently we need 22 more back packs and we have 12 requests to help with tuition already and school does not start for another two week. Back packs and all the needed supplies in Israel runs 300 shekels per student or about $90 per year. Tuition runs 1000 shekels ($ 300) per student and one family that has asked for help has five children.

We need your help to change that. If you could find it in your heart to click here to help us purchase more school supplies we would be grateful for your generosity. May be your group or organization would rather send school supplies and back packs instead and that would be fine as well. If you need any further information about that just click here to contact us and we will be more than happy to help you. We really, really, really need your help to remove this “last Straw”… Thank you for your consideration and help.