Jewish Opportunities Institute

Marriage and family: strife and dysfunction in the home leads to divorce, poverty, child delinquency,mental and physical sickness, and endless suffering. Join provides education and workshops in marriageand parenting, home management, plus subsidies for professional therapy and psycho-didactic assessments. Weekly educational articles in russian are disseminated broadly on two popular websites. Join runs a three-day respite for poor, hyper-stressed mothers, and subsidizes a two night get-away for troubled couples. Join provides intensive home-mentoring for dysfunctional families and big brother/sister mentoring for at-risk youth.

Lifeline: welfare sustains the poor elderly to manage basic expenses from month to month but does not cover emergency "extras." Welfare agency budgets lack the funding and the mandate in several areas to meet even the most urgent needs of impoverished elderly under their care. Lifeline partners with eight municipal welfare agencies in Israel to address the most-critical needs of poor elderly such as dental work, hearing aids, eyeglasses, emergency home repairs, medical transportation and medicine. Assistance is generally between $100 and $600.

School enhancement program: under-funded schools lack the resources to invest in essential academic programs that enable children to realize their scholastic capabilities. Join has established computer centers, science laboratories and science programs, reading libraries, english, sports and music centers, and scholastic equipment and tutoring to bolster the scholastic Opportunities of 25 schools. Pedagogic consultant enhanced skills of 100 teachers.

Assistance to the needy:food assistance and soup kitchen. Small specific financial grants to address emergency medical, psychological, and other situations. Join fulfills specific requests for assistance that are made via one of our staff or by one of several higly reliable and trusted community leaders that we have worked with for several years. These staff members or community leaders are such that the degree of reliability is further ensured. It is required to track assistance offered to ensure that it is not misused. Cash assistance is very moderate (generally between $100 and $600

Youth camp: day camp and camp subsidies relieve the stress and boredom of 600 impoverished children and enable fun and nourishing summer activity.

Pitronot financial advocacy: fraud, theft, unemployment, medical and psychological issues, catastrophic mistakes, and the like can thrust a family into financial and legal quicksand. Assets are encumbered, responsible adults become emotionally or situationally incapacitated, and the family is ravaged. Join's pitronot offers professional debt-restructuring, debt rehabilitation, mediation and advocacy to solve particularly complex predicaments and restore normalcy, self-sufficiency and dignity.