As part of a major campaign to recruit Israeli children to join in with its annual Lag Ba'Omer parade, the Chabad movement in Israel will be taking a page from “cause” organizations like health organization Livestrong, and distribute plastic fashion wristbands to kids throughout the country. The wristband distribution is part of an overall campaign to attract kids to the parade and activities that accompany it, and to provide incentives for children to participate in Chabad activities all year long.
The wristband, in three colors – blue, red, and green - will have the design of a heart embedded on it. The idea is to split kids up into three “teams,” which will initially induce a competitive spirt among participants in the program as they seek to build the bigger teams. But the object of the post-parade activity will be to build a multi-colored chain of wristbands – with the lesson being that all Jews need to work together, and are responsible for each other.
The campaign kicked off Sunday morning, with more than 500 buses around the country sporting large, colorful ads for the parade and the wristbands. Chabad plans to distribute hundreds of thousands of wristbands over the next several weeks, with the post-parade activity calling for a national chain of a quarter-million wristbands.
The project is being conducted with the help of the Hop children's channel, and the Ben-Natan Golan advertising agency.