We use baking as a tool to help people heal.

Right from the start of the Iron Swords War, we recognized the importance of helping people through food. We opened our kitchen, catering a relocated wedding, making cookies and challah for those displaced from the Gaza border region. Yet we felt we could do more. 

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Our unique team of bakers, including bakers certified in Culinary Therapy, drama therapy and group facilitation, built a rigorous program to help displaced children and adults work through their experiences and build resilience, focusing on skill-building, autonomy, and use of metaphor to communicate difficult emotions. With a generous emergency grant from the Miami-Yeruham Partnership 2000, we expanded our kitchen to offer open cooking and baking hours to those living in temporary housing without kitchen facilities, encouraging independence and fostering a connection with home. 

 

Our work is only just beginning. With rates of mental health crises skyrocketing and Israelis only starting to process their collective and individual trauma, we are expanding our programs to reach youth at risk, isolated elderly, schoolchildren in vulnerable areas, families of reservists and more. We are traveling to the Gaza border region regularly to offer sessions to youth and families who have experienced trauma. And through it all we are rigorously researching and refining our programs in collaboration with the Foodlab, a multi-disciplinary research center at Ben Gurion University.

 

Your donation will allow us to train additional bakers in skilled group facilitation, to purchase needed equipment, and to subsidize therapeutic baking sessions to those who need them at this difficult time.