NCJW Israel Granting Program 2008 Grants


Women to Women: NCJW's Empowerment Initiative

Alon was founded by students in Israel with the mission of educating Israel's disadvantaged populations to close the social gaps and strengthen Israeli society. This grant will help fund a project designed to integrate Israeli Arab women into modern Israeli society.

The Center for Women in Israeli Politics is a proposed think tank with the capacity to devise and implement strategies to ensure greater representation of women in Israel's political arena. This grant will fund a one year feasibility study and action plan for the organization.

The Center for Women's Justice represents Israeli women in divorce cases and works to protect the rights of women in Israel's civil and rabbinic courts. This grant is for the Public Interest Litigation Program, which helps empower women through legal advocacy work while also establishing legal precedents in Israel's courts.

Economic Empowerment for Women is dedicated to improving women's lives through financial independence. This grant will help fund a business incubator project designed to provide women who have started small businesses with mentoring services and other resources needed to sustain their businesses as they break out of poverty.

Hotline for Migrant Workers is an organization that works to eliminate trafficking and promote the civil and human rights of migrant workers in Israel. This grant helps fund a program designed to monitor and combat trafficking of Israeli women -- both within Israel and abroad -- to ensure that these women receive healthcare, legal, and rehabilitative services.

Israel Family Planning Association promotes family planning and healthy, responsible sexual choices. This grant funds a project to empower, strengthen, and educate at-risk girls in several central-Israel towns, many of whom are immigrants from Ethiopia and the Former Soviet Union.

The NCJW Women Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University convenes a group of professors who are dedicated to feminism, women's empowerment, and shaping the next generation of scholars. This grant will fund the Telem project, which trains women who are ex-convicts to be instructors and mentors in a rehabilitation day center for other female ex-convicts.

New Family is an education and advocacy organization that focuses on Israeli family and personal status law. New Family aims to create democratic Israeli laws so that people of all genders, religions, nationalities, and sexual orientation have equal family rights. The grant will help fund an education and advocacy project that provides women with the tools to gain access to their legal rights.

Upper Galilee Rape Crisis Center, located in Kiryat Shemona, is an organization that serves Israel's northern region -- the same region that faced the challenges of rebuilding after the 2006 war in Israel. This grant funds a program that recognizes the male role in sexual violence prevention and will train both women and men to be facilitators at the Rape Crisis Center and educators in schools.

Woman to Woman -- Jerusalem Shelter for Battered Women assists battered women and their children as they escape from a cycle of domestic violence, and helps them rebuild their lives by providing tools for independence. This grant provides funding for a program in the Halfway House program that economically empowers women through education, counseling, and mentoring.

Women Against Violence is an organization dedicated to helping Israeli Arabs combat domestic abuse and "honor killing" within their communities. This grant will help fund a halfway house for young women who can no longer live at home. The halfway house provides services to help these young women become self-sufficient with a secure future.


Yad B' Yad: NCJW's Initiative to Nurture Knowledge

College For All is an after-school enrichment program for at-risk Israeli youth. With 14 centers throughout Israel, College For All aims to provide equal access to quality education for youth with limited opportunities so that they can fulfill their educational potential and ultimately become leaders in society. This grant will support the first College For All center in a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Kehilla is an organization established by members of an urban kibbutz to develop projects that promote Jewish pluralism, social involvement, and dialogue within different populations. This grant provides literacy equipment for the community day care centers for at-risk children in Beit Shemesh.

Mahapach is a grassroots organization that works to provide opportunities for at-risk groups and create local leadership in neighborhoods where it is lacking. The grant supports a program in Kiryat Shemona, an already vulnerable town that was directly affected by the 2006 war in Israel. The program funded by this grant is designed to help families in Kiryat Shemona break out of the cycle of poverty by empowering children and their families through education and community action.

The NCJW Research Institute for Innovation in Education (RIFIE) was established by NCJW in 1969 to foster the development of innovative methods of education to meet the needs of immigrant and disadvantaged children and their families, and ultimately facilitate their integration into Israeli society. One of the first programs to be developed at RIFIE is the highly acclaimed and internationally implemented HIPPY/Haetgar program, designed to educate and empower at-risk families. This grant will help fund staff for RIFIE'S Haetgar (HIPPY) programs in Israel.

Summit is an organization whose five emergency foster care shelters help rehabilitate at-risk Israeli children and young adults and prepare them to integrate into mainstream Israeli society. This grant will provide children at the shelters with books, clothing, and toys that they will be able to take with them upon leaving the shelter to live with a foster family.