Back from the Edge is a multi-faceted SHATIL program that works to strengthen immigrant youth-at-risk. In this school, it is implemented by the Israeli Association for Immigrant Children. The following story is from one Be'er Sheva school in the last academic year:

The Life Skills lesson for the day: "Sexual Relations at What Price?" The class: a 10th grade "Challenge" class, the lowest of the three levels in the Tuviahu School in Be'er Sheva. As you might expect, the class full of the school's most troubled students are having a field day with this subject. But they listen attentively to a story that Lena Glozman, the SHATIL Back from the Edge guidance counselor, gives one of the pupils to read aloud. In it, a popular boy presses a lonely girl on the third date to go all the way. She refuses. He tells her, "If you're going to be a baby, I won’t be your boyfriend."

A lively discussion ensues with boys from highly patriarchal Kavkazi (from the Caucuses Mountains) and Georgian backgrounds arguing with girls from the same background about whether or not the boy was acting properly – and not always in the nicest language. Lena uses the discussion to insert values of respecting women.

Albert decided to sit for his matriculation exams

After class, Albert, a 15-year-old with a sweet smile and one of the 80 kids in the project, said: "The life skills class lets us release pent-up energy. We can talk to Lena freely about what we want to talk about, like things between boys and girls. I learned something important today: that a guy can get arrested for rape if a girl just says no. Even if they've already kissed."

Albert wants to be a professional soccer player. His mother works in a bakery and his father is a clerk in a hospital. Albert says that in addition to the "listening ear" that SHATIL's Back from the Edge project provides him, his grades have shot up since he began participating in it and he has decided that he will sit for matriculation exams after all. "Last year I almost got thrown out of the school. I didn’t care about matriculation exams. Now I care. And I study. I realize it's for me – for my life. In math, I went up from an F to a B; in grammar from fail to pass."

While Albert is one of the weakest pupils in the Project and a member of the "Challenge" class, Inja, 15, is in the school's highest level. But last year, she was about to drop out of her high-level math matriculation class when she found herself not understanding the very advanced material. The staff convinced her to stay and she began talking advantage of after school tutoring available to Project participants.

"I’m willing to stay the extra hours because it really helps me," says Inja. "The teachers relate to us personally and talk to us about how to take tests, how to succeed. They encourage us. Before each test, we get even more hours (of help.) As we understand better, we experience more success, more strength. The project has strengthened me."

Inja arrived in Israel at the age of two from Kavkaz. Her mother works as a caretaker and her father is unemployed. She hopes to be the first in her family to attend university.

"It makes me happy that they invest in us, the strong ones, and not just the weak ones. I feel they are investing in me and that they value my hard work. They believe that something will come out of it."