BGU & YOU | NOVEMBER 2023

Eilat Campus Embraces Evacuees

Community outreach □ The University made the U-Tel and some of our dormitories available to medical teams from across the country who came to help at Soroka, as well as to family members of casualties in the hospital. □ Countless volunteers from across the University helped at aid logistics centers throughout the city and country, organizing the donated goods, preparing kits, and distributing them to displaced families and soldiers.

Evacuated school children continue their education in the Eilat Campus. Photo: Dana Nadam

The culinary school kitchen at the Eilat campus fed hundreds daily. Photo: Dana Nadam

Ben-Gurion University’s Eilat campus opened its doors to residents of the South who left their homes. Dozens of families have been housed in the student dormitories, and campus staff are taking care of them. “Families who evacuated from Ofakim, Netivot, Sderot and Ashkelon came to us, and we are prepared, if necessary, to absorb even more residents, including those who left Kiryat Shmona,” said Eilat Campus Dean Prof. Ofer Ovadia. “The entire campus is committed to meeting the needs of students, families and evacuees who have come to us, and we do so with dedication and love.” Accommodation solutions were provided to dozens of preparatory students from Sderot who arrived in Eilat late at night, and every classroom has been taken over by some 600 elementary and high

school students, entire schools from Shaar Hanegev and Eshkol regional councils, who are in the city. In addition, housing assistance was provided to medical teams, including psychologists and psychiatrists, who came from central Israel to reinforce Yoseftal Hospital. The Eilat campus is home to an international school for culinary studies, and the knowledge accumulated by its graduates is being put to good use. In the first couple of weeks of the war, the campus’s kitchens fed hundreds of people, both those staying in student dormitories, and reservists and medical teams stationed in Eilat. “Everyone contributes whatever they can to the war effort, “said Ami Levy, head of the Eilat Campus administration. “We are working around the clock for the people staying with us during these difficult times.”

□ The University opened its doors to Lev Echad – an organization coordinating relief efforts – who used the basement of the Zlotowski building as a logistics center, and its study spaces for a massive call center manned by volunteers, many of them BGU students and staff. □ The Community Action Department launched the BGU For You Program, with student and staff volunteers visiting families of reservists and elderly.

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