As we find ourselves in these painful and somber days, the people of Israel are facing unprecedented trauma and loss – on individual and national levels.
Entire communities, especially in the southern part of the country have been devastated by brutal violence and are mired in deep grief, despair and uncertainty. Having witnessed and experienced horrific brutality and been uprooted from their homes, it is hard for many to retain a sense of hope for the future. With the war still raging and our hostages in captivity, the continued loss of life furthers the sense of despair. There are intricate complexities in beginning to piece together broken lives and in rebuilding trust and security, while honoring the need to grieve.
Over the past 2 decades, Life’s Door (an NGO based in Israeli and the U.S.A.) has developed and stewarded initiatives to bolster the human response to suffering and loss. Life’s Door has offered effective, evidence-based strategies for coping in the face of death, illness and other major life challenges. Based on the Science of Hope, Life’s Door’s flagship program, Hopetimize, has been shown to strengthen resilience, decrease burnout and enhance hopefulness in times of hardship, loss and trauma. Hopetimize trains people to gain a sense of hope during the most challenging of circumstances.
Since the outbreak of the war on Oct 7th Life’s Door has been engaged in offering the “Hopetimize – Enhancing Hope and Resilience” model to health and welfare professionals working within organizations and in the community. This program includes an experiential workshop and offers several levels of training to teams. The intervention is supported by a mobile application which enables participants to continue the learning process and strengthen their levels of hope and resilience for the long term.
- Hopetimize Hope and Resilience Model-Training Medical, Social Service and Care-Giver Personnel
Life’s-Door is offering the Hopetimize Hope and Resilience Model through systemwide integrated roll-out. The organization has deployed a nationwide team of over 40 certified facilitators (health professionals who have received extensive instruction in hope-enhancement which adheres to manualized guidelines). These experts are ready to offer Hope Enhancement training as a key pillar of a comprehensive, national plan which is directed towards trauma recovery. The standardized and manualized training is supported by a digital platform for mass scalability. We aim to train 50 more facilitators in the next 6 months in collaboration with key agencies in the field od trauma and social welfare.
- Remediating Against Staff and Professional Burnout- Care for Care Provider
Israel’s social service systems, have been on the verge of collapse since the outbreak of the war. The limited national resources are insufficient to meet the great need. Staff are being called to respond to dire situations, but many professionals lack the needed skills. As such, these professional teams must be supported. In the absence of staff support, as we learned in the Covid pandemic, we will lose the very people who we need to care for others. Utilizing the Hope Model, Life’s Door offers evidence-based staff support interventions in the form of workshops to care for those in the caring fields in these critical times.
- “Hope Responder” Volunteers – Combatting Isolation and Fear within Community Seniors
The “Hope Responders Volunteer Initiative” of Life’s Door connects volunteers to seniors in need through regular outreach phone contact. This effort proved itself during the pandemic. The volunteers (many university students) are trained and supervised by professional staff, assessing immediate needs and offering connection, friendship, support for seniors in complex and frightening situations. This programs in offered in collaboration with leading health/senior support organizations. Many elders are also suffering post-traumatic stress from previous wars, including elderly Holocaust survivors. We have added 190 volunteers since the start of the war and aim to add 100 volunteers per month as the needs are growing.
- When Grief Meets Hope- Mifgashei Tikva
Community Resilience Trauma Initiative Addressing Displaced People of the South and North
Life’s Door teams are here to respond to the needs of communities who have suffered the most extreme trauma and loss, including displacement from their homes. By offering training to the leadership of educational, health and welfare teams of these communities and kibbutzim, we seek to uplift a wide spectrum of Israel’s citizenship in a process that builds agency and resilience. The program aims to target vulnerable populations within these communities, such as youth, seniors and special needs individuals who are lacking the structure and have lost many peers.
Life’s Door will offer training seminars to communities and local agency leadership focusing specifically on processing grief and loss, toward creating powerful meaning-making experiences. These rich encounters honor the losses that have been sustained while making sacred space for unique, personal, and hopeful narratives. The interventions, are based on evidence-based Hope Enhancement models and grounded in narrative theory and body-mind healing practices.
Life’s Door initiatives respond to the fundamental need of individuals for hope and meaning. They offer a critical sense of connection, to relieve anxiety, combat feelings of isolation and despair during these terrifying days. Programs are designed for best practice and effectiveness in collaboration with our Scientific Advisory Board and accompanied by outcome-based assessment; many of our experiences to date have been published in peer-review professional literature.