From Risk to Opportunity

last updated:  October 11, 2009

Young children with developmental delays are frequently placed in special frameworks so that they won’t hold back the development of other children in nursery school.  Because of this segregation, in the future they might be labeled as “problem children” and may have trouble integrating into normative frameworks and interacting with other children from their age group.

Gvanim’s program, From Risk to Opportunity, enables pre-schoolers with developmental delays to grow up alongside their normative peers.  WIZO’s day care center in Sderot welcomes normative children and those with motoric, linguistic and/or functional challenges.  Paramedical treatments and exercises are carried out in the day care center as part of the daily program. 

From Risk to Opportunity operates as part of Sderot’s Early Childhood Center with WIZO since 2002.  The program staff includes social workers, a paramedical team, fitness trainers and the day care centers teachers.  The cooperation and hard work of the professional staff with its partners ensures that these children will make great strides in development and will be integrated into normative frameworks in the future.

Gvanim thanks its program partners:  WIZO; the Municipality of Sderot, Division of Social Services; Health Care Clinics; the Ministry of Social Welfare Services; the Ministry of Health, Division of Child Development; the Shaar HaNegev Psychological Services Center.