Yad Eliezer was founded on the premise that every Jew in Israel is entitled to a life of dignity, self reliance and self-respect. Established in1981 with the single objective of delivering monthly food baskets to hungry families, Yad Eliezer has grown to encompass over fifteen economic and social service programs that impact on the lives of over 20,000 families each year. Our mandate is to give the international Jewish community the opportunity to reach out to their fellow Jews in Israel, to serve as the conduit for the global Yad Eliezer family – our staff, volunteers and contributors around the world – to support those in Israel who need their help most. The entire Yad Eliezer team works together to combat poverty on the individual, family, communal, and national levels. We aim to provide critical short-term relief while simultaneously confronting the underlying causes of indigence, forging broad-based solutions that empower long-term financial and psychological stability. Each component of Yad Eliezer's comprehensive welfare system - which includes nationwide distribution of essential food, clothing, and household items, job training and child mentoring programs - contributes towards the fulfillment of its mandate to engender economic recovery and social development in Israel. While our roster of programs has expanded and our budget exceeded $47 million this year, our cadre of dedicated Yad Eliezer supporters enables the organization to honor its commitment to limited overhead and minimal expenses while providing personalized and professional assistance to hundreds of thousands of our nation's neediest.

Yad Eliezer was founded in 1980 and is the largest poverty relief agency in Israel. 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.

Yad Eliezer began as a single act of kindness. In 1981 Hadassa Weisel of Jerusalem was approached by a neighbor asking to borrow a cup of milk. The next day, that same neighbor requested a loan of some slices of bread. Mrs. Weisel quickly realized that the mother next door had completely exhausted all her own resources and so had been reduced to “borrowing" food to keep her children from starving. With a mixture of enterprise and generosity, Mrs. Weisel put together a basket of all the food staples a family would generally use – sugar, flour, eggs, dairy products, bread, kids' snacks – and left it on her neighbor's doorstep. The first Yad Eliezer food basket had just been delivered. In the 35 years since, Yad Eliezer has expanded 20,000-fold. We have grown as well from a single food provision program into a multi-dimensional poverty-fighting organization that encompasses well over a dozen social service programs. These facets of growth reflect our concomitant development into one of Israel's most highly regarded non-profit entities, renowned and respected for the efficiency of our fiscal and project management and for our effectiveness in achieving goal-oriented success. Today we manage a $47-million-dollar annual budget, yet we maintain the nimbleness of our original, much smaller, selves, an agility that enables Yad Eliezer to follow “where needs take us," to initiate new programs and re-work longstanding ones as dictated by the needs of our target populations. The scope of our resources, financial, technical, and most importantly: our team, both staff and volunteers, allow us to retain the flexibility to hone in on unique needs that come up – a military operation down south, a blizzard in Jerusalem – and respond immediately. We have our finger on the pulse of society in real-time, and the people of Israel are the beneficiaries of this combination of established long-term programs with short-term emergency campaigns. Our goals were established the day that first food basket was left on a doorstep: To impact the life of every individual in need with immediate assistance, while simultaneously affecting a gradual but broad-based long-term transformation of Israeli society as a whole. Have things changed since then? Indeed. Our financial records were always transparent; today the Deloitte international accounting firm maintains constant impartial supervision; our Jerusalem Warehouse has now been outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment to maximize packing productivity; today YadEliezer. com raises millions; that wall calendar has been replaced by an interactive wedding calendar accessible to would-be sponsors worldwide. Have things changed? You be the judge. Yet, if you just ask the little girl with the Big Sister, the young couple who celebrated their wedding, the would-be entrepreneur who has finally opened his own business, and yes, the hungry family

SOCIAL SERVICES - Yad Eliezer's mentoring program provides over 3,000 severely troubled young boys and 300 girls with a “big brother" or “big sister" who was carefully chosen to provide his/her charge with the love and guidance that he or she lacks at home. The paid mentors are trained; they must fill out monthly and biannual assessment forms to insure that the children receive the best support possible. The proven success of the program enables it to receive up to 30% of its funding from local municipalities. In 2010, Yad Eliezer hired a survey team to determine the results of 10 years of mentoring. The resultant report, “A Decade of Success," details in statistics what we knew to be true anecdotally. A full 96% of participants were placed in standard educational programs upon completion of our mentoring program, or had graduated and were holding down jobs.

Over 100,000 People Receiving Help From Yad Eliezer Over 20,000 Families Receiving Yad Eliezer Aid $47 Million Yad Eliezer's Annual Budget 96. 3% Given Directly to Those in Need 3. 7% Overhead Costs 73 Cities in Israel Assisted By Yad Eliezer Programs 72,880 Food Boxes Delivered (that's well over 100,000 cans of tuna!) 15,000 Yad Eliezer Weddings Made To Date Over 2,000 Soldiers received holiday assistance from Yad Eliezer $1,403,133 in Chicken and Market Vouchers Distributed By Yad Eliezer During The Holiday Periods Over 20 Yad Eliezer Programs Over 12,000 Yad Eliezer Volunteers Over One Million Dollars of Goods and Services Donated to Yad Eliezer for the Poor Over 3,000 Malnourished Babies Fed By Yad Eliezer Monthly Nearly 100% Yad Eliezer Job Training Retention Rate