Beit Hayeled Building in Jerusalem provides shelter and is a haven home to 120 children and youth who were either removed from their parents’ care by a court order or social services, or were dropped at the doorsteps by their parents; this is a home for Israel’s most vulnerable and troubled children. The building, thirty years old, that repairs broken children and youth needs to go through a thorough repairs and remodeling itself.
AMIT strives to educate and empower these disenfranchised children to recognize their own value and potential, giving them the hope and tools needed for a better future.
This week, at the home of Sharon and Elie Gindi in Beverly Hills supporters of AMIT have gathered to launch the Renovation Project Campaign.
Michal Taviv-Margolese, the Western Region Director for AMIT, a name that stands for volunteer organization for Israel and Torah-Bible and is a Zionist-religious education network that operates elementary and high schools in Israel periphery, opened the evening. Special guest from New York was Liz Kilbanoff, AMIT Associate Director of Development.
In 2013 AMIT is proud to be educating 26,000 children who come from all walks of life.
Education is the key to Israel’s future. For Israel to keep a viable economy, by end of the next five years the country needs to create 700,000 jobs and that requires education. It requires a passionate new generation that is going to change the world for the better. Israelis with Jewish values and a love for the land of Israel. AMIT is in the business of cultivating the next such generation of Jewish leadership and members of society.
It is not all about attending an event and fund raising evening in a beautiful home in Beverly Hills. The connection between Amit and the generous people in the United States goes deeper. To attest to that, from August 2013 to June 2013, 19 year old Eliana Porgess dedicated one year of her life working as a volunteer at Midreshet Amit located in Beit Hayeled facility in Jerusalem.
How does it work in an institution where to maintain each child costs $25,000 per annum? The 120 kids to whom Beit Hayeled serves as a home are split into “mishpachtonim,” which are groups of about twelve kids. Each mishpachton consist of two surrogate parents, two sheirut leumi-national service girls and four or five Midreshet Amit girls, one of them was Eliana during her year in Israel.
The surrogate parents, along with the sheirut leumi girls, are in charge of getting the kids ready for school, making them breakfast, packing them lunch and then when they come home from school making them dinner and getting them showered and ready for bed. The Midreshet Amit volunteers’ job is to do homework with the kids, plan activities for them and play games with them. Together they give the kids what they have been deprived off, a family.
There is another good possibility that Eliana and other Midreshet Amit volunteers’ will end up staying or coming back to live in Israel and that is a win-win situation for AMIT, for Israel and for the future of the nation of Israel who are coming back home to roost.
