The Lego Project
The Ezer Mizion Lego Project provides therapeutic benefits and emotional support to various vulnerable groups. Children with cancer and those whose parents have cancer participate in weekly Lego workshops at hospitals and Ezer Mizion centers, fostering creativity, distraction, and emotional resilience. The project also supports hospitalized mental health patients and adult mental health patients, engaging them in constructive activities that promote well-being. Annually, around 10,000 Lego sets are distributed during hospital stays, festive events, and summer camps. The project also extends to war victims, providing Lego sets to evacuated children, released hostages, and wounded IDF soldiers, aiding their reintegration and rehabilitation. The initiative significantly contributes to the emotional and mental health of its beneficiaries, demonstrating the profound impact of creative play in difficult times.
Lego Project Impact on children battling cancer
Ari and his family for 5 difficult years through the ups and downs in the battle with cancer. Building with Lego empowered him and gave him new horizons for creativity and what to look forward to. Sadly, Ari passed away in August 2023. As part of his tombstone, his parents chose to embed his last Lego project which he left unfinished as part of the perpetuation of his memory. That is how much the Lego project meant to Ari and how his parents recognized its contribution to his emotional resilience through the years of pain that he endured.
Lego Project - 2023 Financial Summary
Income (in USD)
Expenses (in USD)
End of Year Surplus (in USD)
Lego Project beneficiaries:
- Children with cancer in active treatment (hospitalized) at Ichilov (Tel Aviv), Schneider (Petach Tikvah), Sheba Tel Hashomer (Ramat Gan), Hadassah (Jerusalem), Rambam (Haifa), Soroka (Beer Sheva) Hospitals. Each week 80 hospitalized pediatric cancer patients benefit from Ezer Mizion’s Lego services.
- Children whose parents have cancer come to Ezer Mizion in PT for a Lego workshop once a week. 50 to 70 children attend weekly.
- Hospitalized mental health patients, specifically girls, with eating disorders, 1 group each in Maayanei Hayeshua Hospital, Bnei Brak (age <18), Assaf Harofeh Hospital Rishon Lezion (age <18), Beer Yaacov Mental Health Hospital, Beer Yaacov (age 18+). Each of these hospital groups has an average of 20 participants, with a total of 60 participants each week for this target population.
- Hospitalized adult mental health patients – 4 groups in Sheba Tel Hashomer (Ramat Gan), 1 group in Maayanei Hayeshua (Bnei Brak). Each hospital group has an average of 20 participants, with a total of 100 participants each week for this target population.
Annual Lego Set Distribution
Each year Ezer Mizion distributes approximately 10,000 sets of Lego. Every time a child is hospitalized, when he finishes a Lego project, he gets another one. And for every new hospitalization, this process starts again from the very beginning, with a new Lego set.
Sets are also distributed at calendar highlights when Ezer Mizion hosts gatherings such as: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah and also at Ezer Mizion’s summer camps for cancer patients, mental health rehab clients and teens and young adults with special needs, with hundreds of recipients during the summer.
Iron Swords War and Ezer Mizion’s Lego Project
Evacuees and War Victims
When the war began in October 2023, we distributed 1,500 sets of Lego to children who were evacuated from their homes and an additional 300 sets to special cases (children whose parents/siblings were killed, children whose parents were kidnapped, etc.).
Released Hostages
A few hours after the first children were released from captivity in Gaza, Maor was asked by Schneider, Sheba Tel Hashomer and then Ichilov hospitals to come to the released children and bring them a Lego set and spend time with them as part of their reintegration from captivity. This repeated itself with every new release of children. (Shown: Maor delivering Lego sets to Ohad Moondar and Maya Leinberg in the hospital shortly following their release from captivity.)
Wounded IDF soldiers
In February 2024, Ezer Mizion began a project at the request of the IDF in Sheba Tel Hashomer Rehab Center (Ramat Gan), working specifically with arm and leg amputees and seriously injured soldiers who are currently hospitalized and undergoing months of rehab care. Today we have over 70 IDF soldiers who are working on Lego projects. When they finish one project, they get another set. All the costs for this project are on Ezer Mizion.
We do not distribute Lego sets to newly wounded soldiers. We want them to benefit from it directly when they are ripe and ready for it and that happens as soon as they are released from the hospital to rehab centers where they stay, many of them for months for months. Only then we enter the picture, once they are beginning the long-haul rehab process that is often discouraging, challenging and painful.
Another 200 IDF soldiers in Rabin Beilinson (Petach Tikvah), Beit Lewenstein (Ra’anana), Rambam (Haifa), Bnei Zion Rehab Center (Haifa), Ichilov (Tel Aviv) Rehab Centers are waiting for Ezer Mizion to come and bring the Lego project their way to their wounded soldiers. Every Lego set that we give to IDF soldiers costs an average of $350. These are larger, more sophisticated, and more expensive sets than those we distribute to children.
The first set for each of these soldiers will cost us $70,000 (NIS300,000) for the first month alone for accompanying these additional 200 soldiers for the first month. (each time Maor comes he brings a new set). This is something we can undertake only with committed adequate funding from caring donors like you.