American Friends of Yad Eliezer

Yad Eliezer began in 1980 in the kitchen of the Weisel family of Jerusalem. They prepared a food basket for a neighbor who could not feed her children, and were soon delivering monthly food baskets to hungry families. Yad Eliezer has now grown to encompass 15 primary economic and social service programs that impact tens of thousands of individuals. Yad Eliezer has always maintained that poverty is about more than food, that is but one symptom among the many layers of challenge that comprise “the cycle of poverty”: • Unemployment of the family breadwinner may result in children dropping out of school, out of fear of their peers’ mockery or as a result of a home environment antithetical to study. • Illness of one child may take precedence over feeding the others, leading to severe cases of undernourishment among children (especially babies). • Parental abandonment or neglect leaves children emotionally and physically endangered, and may lead to criminal or socially dysfunctional behavior – or at the very “least,” despair. Yad Eliezer's mandate is to help families cope with financial difficulties and to empower them to break through the cycle of poverty and achieve self-sufficiency. Our objective is to combat poverty at its root, through an array of programs that provide critical short-term relief, while facilitating long-term recovery. Each component of Yad Eliezer's comprehensive welfare system – nationwide distribution of essential food, clothing and household items, job training, and adolescent mentoring programs – contributes toward economic recovery and social development. Source: www.yadeliezer.org