Brothers in Arms' civilian operations room has set up a database with 5,000 jobs offered to evacuees from their homes. In recent weeks, some 150 senior placement consultants in human resources management positions in high-tech companies and leading companies have held job fairs at the hotels where the evacuees are staying, and accompany each of them personally in order to help them find work until they return home.
Peak of emotion: Be'eri evacuees watch the release of the abductees and cheer every time they identify a kidnapped person who has been released // Photo: Yoni Rikner
The operations room that was established is currently operating in cities in central Israel, in impressive cooperation with the welfare departments of the host municipalities, Tel Aviv and Herzliya, and of the host cities, Sderot and Kiryat Shmona, and at any given moment handles 300 evacuees. These days, the operations room is expanding its operations to Jerusalem, Haifa and Tiberias, and later on it will also expand to Eilat and the Dead Sea.
The focus is on the evacuees
Dubev Goldstein, 48, a daily high-tech entrepreneur in the worlds of communications and data, joined the civilian war room on Black Saturday and took part in the establishment of the evacuee administration, which also assisted the evacuees in supplying hotel equipment and homemade food, setting up educational frameworks in hotels, recruiting volunteers for farms, and so on.
He explains that later they realized that the needs of the evacuees had changed. "Out of about 150,67 evacuees, there are about <>,<> employees, most of whom cannot reach their workplace. They need to continue working both for a living, but also for a sense of self-worth and control over their lives.
"We know the difficulty, and even more so when it comes to the trauma of being evicted from home and the need to find yourself in a foreign city, in a hotel room or in a small apartment. We decided to help people find employment where they were evicted through the network we have in each city, and we contacted employers.
Dubbed Goldstein. "We decided to help people find employment," Photo: Private
"Our focus is on the evacuees. We accompany them all the way, and offer them jobs until they find the job that suits them," Dubev explains, noting that many employers in companies in the economy are mobilizing to help absorb the workers who were evacuated from the south and north, even if it is only for a temporary period.
Silvi, a 70-year-old resident of Kiryat Shmona, worked as a bookkeeper and office manager in her son's company before the war. Since she was evacuated to Tel Aviv, she has not worked, and in the war room they found her work in the Tel Aviv municipality and the Ministry of Education.
In the morning and afternoon, she accompanies a girl with special needs to school, and in between she works in a club set up in a hotel for the small children.
"By the time I found the job, I felt terrible. I sat in the hotel doing nothing, just thinking about what would happen to us. We have a lot of expenses, and we had no income. Now I'm putting some money into the bank, and the fact that I'm working gives me a good feeling."
You can contact the operations room hotline on WhatsApp at 054-9017708.
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