Yad B’Yad

Warm homes for children at risk in Israel.

Tali. This beautiful child’s impoverished immigrant family is in severe distress. Her father is unemployed and abusive; her mom is struggling to maintain a series of odd jobs to keep her family together. And Tali is at risk for falling through the cracks. Sadly, the stories go on and on.

We could fill pages with the pain and sadness that these children have endured. Israel is a society like all others. Her people face the same life challenges. Poverty exists. Family violence, abuse and neglect are a fact of life and growing at an alarming rate. And that was before the horrific violence of the past two years erupted.

The intensity of living in a landscape of terror is stressful for all Israelis. But for those already in crisis, already vulnerable, the uncertainty and violence exacerbate already fragile, deteriorating personal situations. Especially hard hit are new immigrant families.

As the country has strained to meet the spiraling needs of a population that has swelled by %25 over the past twelve years, there are critical human service needs that simply have not been met. The most alarming of which are when innocent children fall through the cracks of an overburdened social welfare system. The axiom all Jews are responsible for one another cannot possibly have more meaning than our responsibility towards children at risk.

Yad b”Yad (‘hand in hand’) introduced the Bayit Hom (Warm House) concept beginning in first grade, but the over strained system simply did not have the resources to provide afternoon care for the nursery and kindergarten age children. That left these children in unstable and fare too often, unsupervised environments. Many times, literally out on the streets after school.

The primary aim of the Warm House program: to provide as many extended hours as possible in a safe, “protected” environment. This ensures that the child’s basic nutritional needs can be met and that through supervision, activities and counseling, they can receive consistent, positive attention to begin to mend their broken lives.