students helping
students helpingRegavim

Students from the Regavim agricultural school network arrived today (Monday) in communities in the Gaza vicinity to help rehabilitate the fields that were burned in the wave of kite attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Arutz Sheva spoke to Gavriel Hemo, the director of the "Ruach Hagolan" organization, which is behind the Regavim network, about the volunteerism.

Hemo said that the initiative was the idea of the students.

"Throughout the years, working with the farmers in the fields in the Negev Valley and the Golan Heights, they have shown full solidarity and worked together with the farmers in the settlement areas, and it was natural that when they saw the farmers' distress, they felt it would be right to participate and show solidarity as part of their values."

"We are dealing with the harvest, re-planting burned fields, and all the ordinary types of agriculture that are well-known, and deal with them every day as part of their regular educational system.

Hemo notes that this is not just a two-day donation, but rather an ongoing operation in which the Regavim students will participate over the next two weeks and that for the next two months if they are asked, they will continue to provide required assistance.

"In addition, the agricultural area is very happy to show solidarity from other settlement sites in Israel who come to provide assistance and to be partners in dealing with the agricultural difficulty in this area."

Hemo was asked whether the parents were worried about sending their children to an area which ha. Hemo responded that the entire initiative is taking place with the approval of the parents and in coordination with the Ministry of Education's tour director. "The parents are happy that their children are responsible, and this is part of their educational values, part of what they are going through daily, and also of responsibility for other settlers who are in distress in a different region than the one they are in."

Hemo notes that help and assistance to farmers in distress is not new to the students of Regavim. "All the years, Regavim has been helping other farmers who are in distress ... A few months ago there was a problem for farmers in the Jezreel Valley region, and at another event we helped other farmers in the valleys, It's not the first case and not the last case."