(COLORADO SPRINGS) — As the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on, people living in the Gaza Strip along with reporters and soldiers, are all finding refuge in brightly painted bomb shelters.

When the air raid sirens go off in Israel, you have just 15 seconds to find shelter. For kids on a playground or walking to and from school, it usually means sheltering in a blank, ominous structure.

“When kids are walking to school and along the route to school, there’s a bomb shelter,” said Rabbi Jay Sherwood of Temple Shalom in Colorado Springs. “It looks scary.”

He added this could mean more stress in an already stressful situation. “When you’re running to a scary-looking thing, it adds fear,” he said.

In the last several years, the Jewish Nation Fund-USA (JNF) found kids are more likely to have positive views of these structures when murals are painted on them.

“It made these bomb shelters more inviting, less intimidating and really beautified the area,” said Barbara Burry, Mountain States Regional Board Member with JNF.

Burry lives in Colorado and sponsored two murals in Israel.

“My grandchildren decided that they wanted all our dogs on the shelters painted on there,” Burry said. “And, being from Colorado, I wanted a mountain kind of a scene. And that’s what we got on the second one. It’s happy. It’s mountains, it’s trees.”

That’s the idea behind the painted bomb shelters — invoking the feeling of happiness and calm among kids. So, shortly after Rabbi Sherwood’s latest trip to Israel, he decided this was something Temple Shalom in Colorado Springs could take on.

“Before [the war] broke out, I thought to myself while I was there, ‘this is something my congregation can do… something concrete — made out of concrete to take care of people,'” Rabbi Sherwood said.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Sherwood’s congregation raised more than $10,000 to have one of these bomb shelters painted.

“We’re going to have Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak painted on the mural, on the bomb shelter that Temple Shalom is going to buy with the money that we’ve been able to raise.”

Rabbi Sherwood added that this makes it even more like a gift from Colorado to Israel, and he said he is proud of his synagogue for pulling together to make this possible.

“We’re not a big congregation, but in under a month we raised not only the $10,000, but a couple of thousand extra that will also go into emergency efforts for safety in Israel that take care of those who are in need.”