Lod, Israel October 2, 2013 – Ayalim (www.ayalim.org.il/en) , an Israeli non-profit, has been establishing youth villages in impoverished towns and cities across Israel. On October 2013, two weeks before the academic school year begins, hundreds of Israeli students will gather in the city of Lod to join forces and transform an abandoned building into a student village. Only a fifteen minute drive from the beaches, hotels, and skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, the city of Lod has become synonymous with failure, decay, and neglect. The city’s fractured community, high crime and unemployment have made it a place to avoid. The Ayalim Association is determined to change this. In October 2013, just before the academic school year begins, hundreds of Israeli students will gather in the city of Lod for a bi-annual Building Festival organized by the Ayalim Association. For over a decade, Ayalim, an Israeli non-profit, has established 12 student villages in impoverished towns and cities across Israel. In 2011, Ayalim established a student village in Lod in order to help the city tackle its issues of poverty and lack of education resources. Changing the dynamic on the ground is absolutely essential for Lod’s 70,300 residents – a mixture of Arab Christians, Muslims, Bedouin, and Jews, of which many are new immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. The betterment of Lod ties into the wider aims of Israel, namely having a more equitable distribution of people and economic resources throughout the country. In September 2013, Israel’s Ministry for the Development of the Negev and Galilee announced a $30 million project to attract 300,000 new residents to the country’s peripheries over the next ten years. Constructed in established communities throughout the periphery, Ayalim’s student villages act as a seed for young community and growth in areas that have long been depressed by dire socio-economic circumstances. Through charitable endeavors and an inspired framework for settlement, the students are laying the groundwork for the peripheries to flourish while in turn, they become connected to the land, the nation, and the essence of Zionism. The current village in Lod is focused on activities that strengthen the existing residents of the city through educational outreach and street festivals. “There’s a feeling that people are happy that we’re here, happy to see young people in the neighborhood, and everyone is hopeful that we’ll succeed in impacting this ancient city that knew more magnificent times…and like Sleeping Beauty, will start to awaken from her slumber,” said one student in Lod. Now Ayalim wishes to take over what is presently an abandoned, dilapidated school building and convert it into a second urban village. In October, hundreds of students and volunteers will renovate the structure, turning the classrooms into apartments for fifty students to inhabit. They also plan to rebuild the sports centre, landscape the site, and plant a community vegetable garden. Once finished, their work will concentrate on their immediate surrounding, building parks for Lod’s children, running family centers and afterschool programs in order to be “a living example of social activism” for the Lod community. Ayalim is addressing potential supporters directly, “Think about it — the next time that you’re in Israel, you can visit the Student Village in Lod and know that you yourself made a difference for the children and families in this neighborhood.” Discover here how you can support this project and be part of building Israel. http://ayalim.org.il/en/the-lod-project/ Contact us for more information: http://ayalim.org.il/en/contact-us-2/