Ofakim Mayor Tzvi Greengold, left, joins Linda and Murray Laulicht at a ground-breaking ceremony Nov. 16 for the center that will bear the name of the West Orange residents.
November 27, 2008
The teens and preteens of Ofakim will soon have a safe place for recreation, counseling, and homework help, thanks to a West Orange couple who donated a youth center to the development town in southern Israel.
Murray and Linda Laulicht and participants on the Major Gifts Mission of the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ joined Ofakim Mayor Tzvi Greengold at a ground-breaking ceremony Nov. 16 for the center, which is set to open at the end of 2009.
UJC MetroWest has a sister-city relationship with Ofakim through the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program.
The youth center is being built on the site of an abandoned building where disadvantaged youth previously loitered at all hours.
The facility will serve the 8,000 school-age children of Ofakim with homework help and psychological and social counseling. It will also include a kitchen for nutrition classes.
One of 15 such centers around Israel, it will be supported by the municipality; the Israeli Education, Health, and Welfare ministries and UJC MetroWest.
Grandchildren of the Laulichts fill the center cornerstone with cement after a copy of a proclamation and a newspaper were inserted.
Some 100 guests were at the ground breaking, including 50 of the Laulichts’ fellow MetroWesters.
Murray Laulicht, a former UJC MetroWest president, said he was proud to help out the youth of Ofakim, who represent the town’s three similar-sized populations: the fervently Orthodox, children and grandchildren of immigrants from North Africa who came in the 1950s, and more recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia.
“We have worked for Ofakim for 12 years, and this is a good way to show our confidence in the town’s future and its children,” Laulicht said.
“The purpose is to help the children and their families who are living in difficult economic circumstances fulfill their basic needs in nutrition and diet, assist them with their schoolwork, and improve their lives. The fact that people are making this investment in them shows confidence in them, and that improves their self-esteem.”
The MetroWest delegation was in Israel to attend the General Assembly of the national United Jewish Communities, the annual gathering of Jewish federation leadership, which concluded Nov. 19.
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