The health-related professions team at ADI Jerusalem, always on the alert to find new ways to enhance and develop, tasked themselves with a different kind of rehabilitation project as they stepped in to rejuvenate neglected agricultural fields in the Gaza Envelope area.
Tzikki Raz, coordinator of health-related professions at ADI Jerusalem, decided to heed the call of desperate farmers whose fields lay barren for lack of agricultural workers since the Hamas infiltration of October 7, and the start of Operation Iron Shields. Tzikki asked her team to join her, and, with the blessing of ADI Jerusalem CEO Shlomit Grayevsky, the group set out for a day of volunteerism to work fields belonging to farmer Pauli Pe’er in the Netzer Chazani district.
Arriving at their destination, ADI Jerusalem occupational therapists, physiotherapists and communication therapists descended upon the fields, trampled through the mud, and spent the day sowing and planting.
“We arrived to a totally empty field,” recalled Tzikki. “It was so obvious they needed us. Everyone joined in, expectant mothers and younger girls with manicured hands. Everyone was on the ground getting dirty. The work was hard, but so fulfilling. After a few hours, the previously barren field was a lovely shade of green, and we knew we did our part to fulfill a national need.”
Emotional beyond words, farmer Pauli Pe’er repeatedly thanked the group and, with tears in his eyes, asked if they would be willing to come back to harvest the crop in a few months.
The day they took to the fields just happened to be December 7, International Volunteers Day, but as Tzikki Raz knows, for ADI Jerusalem’s health-related professions team, every day is a day of wholehearted giving.
