The enormous humanitarian crisis brought on by the recent earthquake in Haiti has prompted a swift, multi-leveled response from JDC. As the official humanitarian assistance organization of the Jewish community and the Jewish Federations of North America, JDC and its partners are on the ground providing critical medical aid, equipment, and services to victims. In the long-term, JDC will work with the people of Haiti to restore infrastructure and rebuild their community life.

JDC’s current efforts continue its long-standing commitment to being a source of non-secular, humanitarian assistance for victims of natural and man-made disasters, in the spirit of the Jewish principle of tikkun olam (repair the world).

Another Jewish value—that all Jews are responsible for one another—guides JDC’s work on behalf of Jews at risk around the world. The start of 2010 brings with it a great urgency to this mission as the global economic downturn threatens vulnerable Jewish people everywhere. In the former Soviet Union, 168,000 elderly Jews depend on JDC for basic nutrition and medicine, but tens of thousands more need our assistance; and beyond the 25,000 impoverished Jewish children and their families we are reaching, an estimated 20,000 more are struggling in these trying times to make ends meet. In the Baltic states, thousands of Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian Jews who had strived successfully to achieve a middle-class lifestyle have been thrust back into poverty by lost jobs, homes, and savings. In Israel, the gap separating poor from wealthy is the largest of any country on Earth.