Keren Ohel Meir’s Nigunim Hostel for At-Risk Adolescent Girls is the only long-term, supportive living environment for at-risk, adolescent girls from ultra-Orthodox families throughout Israel.

The Nigunim Hostel in order to provide physical shelter, protection, and spiritual and emotional support for Orthodox at-risk adolescents.

The Nigunim Hostel provides these adolescent girls - between ages 13 to 18 – with:

• A supportive environment that recognizes their religious backgrounds and helps them create healthy links to family, friends and community.
• Academic assistance, vocational training, conventional and alternative psychological therapies and a wide variety of activities, which address the residents’ range of individual needs.
• A program to improve their emotional stability and overall mental health, to build confidence and to guide them toward productive, independent lives.

The Nigunim Hostel is staffed by experts – a director, two social workers, a therapy coordinator, an education coordinator, a house mother, teachers and volunteers – who provide the girls with tools to help them make positive changes in their lives and to serve as positive role models for the girls. This is the only place of its kind in Israel, and it is run with the cooperation of the Welfare Ministry.

Keren Ohel Meir’s Nigunim Hostel for At-Risk Adolescent Girls provides more than just a physical home. It provides opportunities for these young women to gain self sufficiency as they look toward a more hopeful, positive future.

Nechama* is one of the many girls who was rescued by the Nigunim Hostel. Below is a letter she wrote five years after staying in the Hostel:

How does an Orthodox girl grow up to be a prostitute? Sometimes I wonder myself.

Although I grew up in an Orthodox home, I was beaten and abused by my parents and brothers. When things got worse at home, I ran away and lived on the streets. I drank. I took drugs and turned to prostitution to support my habits. I was sure that nobody cared what would happen to me.

I was 17 when the police found me on the streets and brought me to Nigunim’s shelter. The caring people at the Nigunim Hotel believed in me and listened to what I had to say. Several times a week, I met with counselors who nurtured my sense of self. They helped me work through my problems, tutored me and enrolled me in a secretarial course. They even helped me find my first job.

I had succeeded at something, I was earning my own money and people were proud of me! Slowly I came to realize that I wasn’t worthless. I began to imagine my future – a home and a family, a normal life.

It is now more than five years since I first came to Nigunim. Today, I am married and expecting my firstt child. It is hard for me to express how happy and grateful I am that Nigunim exists to help girls like me.

* - Names have been changed