IDF Education and Youth Corps mobilize to support evacuees nationwide

With every sector committing itself to support the war effort, the IDF's Education and Youth Corps has been deployed to support the 130,000 internally displaced people inside Israel to strengthen their personal, community, and national resilience.

The corps' main objective in peacetime is to help assimilate new soldiers into Israeli culture.

Since the outbreak of war on October 7, all 1,000 staff members of the corps have been mobilized in support of the over 130,000 evacuees, who have been evacuated from areas near Gaza and the North.

Further down the road, the corps is expected to help with the rehabilitation of evacuated settlements, and the return of those evacuees to their homes while strengthening their communities.

When first mobilized, the corps expected to primarily help the evacuee youth by running kindergartens and "a kind of school" in their hotels. They quickly realized that many other evacuees needed support, in particular the elderly.

How the corps help

"As mentioned, we started with activities with children and youth," Gaya Barkan, a soldier in the Education and Youth Corps said. "We very quickly identified another need in the hotel, and decided that we are starting to produce activities for the elderly, with the aim of giving the adults a little pleasure during this time as well."

Barkan and the other corps members started a game night and invited seniors to come and have hot coffee and talk with them. 

"These game nights are very successful, and in the picture, you can see me and Yaakov, a resident of Sderot who was evacuated from his home, playing checkers. Needless to say, Yaakov won a crushing victory over me," Barkan said.

Barkan highlighted the importance that her role plays on the home front: "I can say that when the children and parents see us, soldiers at the age of 20, in uniform - they feel safer and stronger. This is our goal, and we will continue to do it as much as necessary and wherever necessary."