b'Teaching Leadership to Teens in AshkelonIn the Fall 2008 edition of the HOT News we titled a vignette Ashkelon - Another Sderot? We wrote this after a summer of Hamas missiles being fired at a town with hotels, a beautiful beach, and a port known as the Israeli Riviera. We renovated two bomb shelters, one of which wastohouseatrainingandleadershipcenter(TLC)tobeusedtoempoweranddevelop young leaders who were to then lead youth group branches located all over the city. It was to be a hub to make an important contribution to empowering teens and developing leadership skills. Through the years, we have funded several youth-at-risk projects in Ashkelon (the city of Ashkelonfoundusapartnerformanyofthem),andwhenHamasstartedlaunching missiles at Ashkelon in the summer of 2014, we immediately called Sigal (our contact in the city) to see how HOT could help. Over the following 7 weeks we spoke to each other as many as 3 times a day and often emailed morethan10timesaday.Duringthe War, the food HOT bought to feed the up to 4,000 children a day, and the toys and suppliesweboughttoentertainthevery youngchildren,weretakentothepublic shelters by the teens, who disbursed them from the TLC shelter.The teens acted as surrogate parents playing with the young children and doing whatever they could do to keep themfromfocusingonthesirensandexplosions.Seepage57toseewhatelseHOTdid during the war.In October 2014 there was another chapter in this incredible story. HOT visited the TLC after the war and met eight of the teens. We asked them werent you afraid of the sirens and missiles.Andtheyanswered:YES-duringthefirstdaytheywereBUTstartingonthe second day they didnt have time to be scared because it was their job to make sure the younger kids were calm. It took a moment to process these words coming from a 17-year-old, speaking for a group of 14 to 17-year-olds, and when we processed these words, we told them that the people who called them the FUTURE of Israel were WRONG because they were the PRESENT of Israel. It may have been their older brothers and sisters and in some cases fathers or mothers that fought in Gaza, or were stationed on the border, but these teens fought the war too. Since 2014, Hamas has dug more tunnels, rearmed itself with new missiles, and the residents of Ashkelon go to sleep each night not knowing what the next day will bring.This year, the city of Ashkelon is asking for: $5,452permitting123teenstomakeweeklyvisitsto4assistedlivingcenters, bringingpastries,birthdaycakes,balloons,andcandlestotheelderlyand Holocaust survivors $7,174 remaining cost for a camp program for 350 at-risk teens $14,347 remaining cost for a work program for 100 at-risk teens 33'