The ASSAF Youth Club

The ASSAF Youth Club is a multi-year project, designed to provide a warm and welcoming space for teens from the asylum seekers community residing in Israel. The club’s activities include group activities that take place twice a week, and individual accompaniment and support on a regular basis.

The boys and girls from the asylum-seekers community face not only the difficulties of adolescence – but also language barriers and questions about identity, culture, forced migration, loss and trauma. The youth club gives them an island of stability and support, keeps them away from the dangers of the street and provides them with a protected and supportive social and educational framework.

This framework allows them to share and process their experiences: alongside engaging with issues that occupy teenagers, such as questions about the future and self-fulfillment, the blub members share experiences and insights from the journey they and their families made to Israel, and the difficult encounter with complex Israeli reality. Concerns about imprisonment and deportation back to their countries of origin also arise, and the group framework encourages this sharing and processing of difficult feelings and questions.

The kids in the youth club eat together, paint, do homework, talk, study and play computer games. During the summer they enjoy increased activity that includes hiking and special excursions.

The youth who come to the club’s activities meet with Israeli volunteers, as well as volunteers from the asylum-seeking community. All club volunteers undergo training and receive professional support throughout their volunteering period.

In order to provide holistic guidance to the boys and girls who need it, the club coordinator is in contact with the kids individually, as well as with the boys’ parents, teachers and school counselors, social workers and other caregivers.