In 2024, ELEM provided over 10,000 hours of therapeutic support to youth impacted by sexual abuse, human trafficking, and exploitation.
Through programs like Orshina, the HaLev (The Heart) shelter program, Bayit Amiti (A Real Home), and the Center for Sexual Violence, ELEM staff and volunteers meet one-on-one and in group sessions with young survivors.
For youth who do not seek out traditional therapy services, ELEM’s informal approach is a way to connect youth at extreme risk to care they would not otherwise receive.
Many young people enter ELEM’s programs through the ELEM outreach initiatives: teams of staff and volunteers from each program scout locations where at-risk youth may be found in especially vulnerable situations and slowly build a trusting relationship with them. After days, weeks, or months of these efforts. the ELEM team will invite the youth into the shelter or program, where, in addition to basic humanitarian aid, the youth will receive formal weekly therapy, as well as participate in informal therapeutic group activities.
For other survivors, they seek to join ELEM programs on their own, knowing that ELEM’s informal, initial approach is collaborative and nonjudgmental. Many teens will seek out ELEM online, or transition from an outreach program or day program into a more tailored center for their experiences. Orshina, notably, is Israel’s only center that support adolescent male survivors of sexual abuse, and provides care both in a dedicated building space and through the public “Orshina in the City” project. Formal therapy – both individual and group – takes place in the Orshina Center.
Families who experience sexual abuse within the family system will often be referred to ELEM’s Center for Sexual Violence, which provides individual and family therapy for the victim, the perpetrator, and the entire family unit.
