Casting Away Grief
Bangkok Post – June 19 2005
…84 Thai teachers from tsunami-hit schools and child care centres in Ranong and Phangnga who took part in a trauma relief workshop held early this month in Phuket. Organised by the Prince of Songkhla University's Art and Cultural Centre with the help of three Israeli trainers and sponsored by the JDC, the workshop was held to help local helpers, particularly teachers and social workers, cope with their own trauma before helping traumatised children…

Kibbutz by the Black Sea
JTA – June 16 2005
… south Ukraine. The first settlers in Crimea in 1922 were members of the Hehalutz movement. With help from the JDC and the introduction of advanced farming methods, they brought to life previously uninhabited regions…

Young survivors of Beslan siege find R&R at Jewish summer camp
JTA – June 15 2005
…The 75 boys and girls were survivors of the bloody terrorist siege and massacre last September that took the lives of more than 300 people at a school in the town of Beslan, in southern Russia… Hosted by the JDC, they participated in a specially designed program that integrated traditional summer camp activities such as sports, arts and crafts and informal education with ongoing post-trauma therapy… "It’s just amazing to me, given all the history, to hear these kids singing in Russian, in a Jewish camp, in Hungary. It makes me hopeful that we can overcome the past," he said…

Presidential fund helps tsunami project
JTA - June 6 2005
...The playground project in Sri Lanka now has $2 million pledged to it, half from the JDC and the USAID, and half from the Bush-Clinton Fund. The project is focused on rebuilding and upgrading playgrounds and parks in regions of the country ravaged by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

Rebuilding Jewish Lives In The FSU
The Jewish Week – June 3 2005
…Aside from her pension, her only source of sustenance now is the approximately $30 worth of food, medicine and other services (like transportation and a few hours a week of home care) she receives from Chesed, a charitable welfare network funded by the JDC… "Chesed is everything to me," she said with a smile. "Everything." … But everyone who took part in the mission to the FSU last week agreed that the need was vital and urgent…

United States to construct or rehabilitate 100 children's parks in Sri Lanka
Colombo Page – May 16 2005
...The United States Embassy in Colombo announced today that the US will construct or rehabilitate 100 children's parks across 13 districts along the damaged coasts of Sri Lanka… "The project will be executed through the USAID in partnership with the JDC and the local NGO Sarvodaya… "These children’s parks are a great example of a public-private partnership to improve the daily lives of many Sri Lankan children affected by the tsunami," said US Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead.

Touring two troubled communities: From Lithuania to Argentina
Canadian Jewish News– May 12 2005
…So what is being done to help these communities? In both countries, we were pleased to meet representatives of JDC and the Jewish Agency – UJA Federation's overseas partners. We were impressed with their well thought out plans…

My Back Pages: The search for family roots in what is now Belarus yields a priceless generational tie
The Jewish Week – May 6 2005
… embarked on a family roots search a few years ago, going on-line, reading old documents my grandparents had serendipitously saved… Last month I went over there. Supported by the JDC, I volunteered to help lead Passover seders in Grodno; the 1,500-member Jewish community, still reeling from decades under atheistic communism, lacks the knowledge to conduct their own festival meals…"

JDC Committee To Bring Delegation of European and Asian Students to March of the Living
noticias.info – May 4 2005
The JDC is sponsoring a delegation of 21 university students from 10 European and Asian countries to participate in this year's March of the Living, which will take place at Auschwitz-Birkenau on May 5. The students, recognized Jewish activists and leaders, range in age from 20-25 and will represent Jewish communities in Bulgaria, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and India…

Armenia’s Jewish Hero
Jewish Week – April 22 2005
…The recent $20 million settlement between a major American insurance firm and the heirs of Armenian policyholders killed in the Armenian Genocide had its genesis, indirectly, in the memoirs written nearly 90 years ago by a Jewish-American diplomat…The ambassador, who died in 1946, is considered a hero in Armenia, where a tree in his honor stands on the Walk of Righteous Non-Armenians…After returning to the United States from his posting in Constantinople, Morgenthau Sr., who was active in Jewish affairs and was a founder of the JDC, took up the cause of the Armenians…

Chicago Students helps Kiev Hillel Write a New Page in Ukraine's Jewish History
Hillel – April 18 2005
… The program was established in 1996 by the JDC and is supported by The Hillels of Illinois and the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. The Purim Project presents the opportunity for Jewish college students in America to emotionally and physically experience the cultural heritage of Judaism in Ukraine, connect with the global Jewish community, enhance Jewish leadership skills and support the revival of Jewish identity in the former Soviet Union after years of oppression. The group was composed of 22 students from universities in Chicago and Kiev…

Group helps Brazilian Jews find jobs, health care and self-respect
The Jerusalem Post – April 3 2005
…credits Voluntarios da Alianca (VA), or Alliance Volunteers, a Rio-based Jewish social outreach program, with finding her job and restoring her self- esteem… The JDC helped provide VA with startup and assistance capital during its first three years of operation. "I started VA because I was confronted with the problem of the growing impoverishment of Rio's Jewish middle class and felt something needed to be done Goldstein said. And since I've always been a Jewish community leader I embraced the cause…"

Tsunami refugees flock to MDA clinic in India
The Jerusalem Post – March 29 2005
…The delegation, sponsored by the JDC and the Brit Olam organization, headed by a physician who is an expert in infectious diseases and including a paramedic, arrived at a refugee camp for fishermen in the area… So far they have treated 1,000 refugees, most of them women and children and even a day-old baby. MDA said that the delegation's presence has become known far and wide by word of mouth, and would-be patients line up from early in the morning to get help…

Katsav backs 'protective council' for elderly
The Jerusalem Post – March 24 2005
The Association of Senior Citizens is lobbying for the establishment of a council for the protection of the elderly to be run along similar lines to the Council for the Protection of the Child. Association chairman Gideon Ben-Israel put the proposal to President Moshe Katsav on Wednesday and received firm assurances of his support. Katsav who has been working closely with Eshel the branch of the JDC that provides services for the elderly told Ben-Israel his deputies Moshe Wertman and Yitzhak Caspit and Ruthie Aharon who heads the senior citizern's division of Na'amat that he is prepared to do more for the poor and infirm elderly than for any other sector of society…

Laughter as medicine
The Jerusalem Post – March 16 2005
The international Jewish community has sent in the clowns to help teenagers traumatized by the tsunami. And they seem to be helping. "The clowns might not be able to give us physical help, but they help us to get out of the trauma because we are laughing a lot here. Sense of humor is important for us, especially now…" Darin is one of 50 Buddhist and Muslim teenagers from Thailand's tsunami-ravaged Andaman coast who joined the camp recently organized by the Israeli embassy in Thailand, the JDC and a local nonprofit agency, the Population Community Development Association.

International Conference Focuses on Jewish Pre-school Education
FJC – March 15 2005
International conference "Jewish Pre-School Education Programs in the CIS" has gotten underway in Dnepropetrovsk… this initiative was jointly arranged by the city's Jewish Community Center, the JDC and the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Institute of Social and Community Workers… This experience will allow numerous Jewish diasporasa to share their experience with respect to the field of education…

College students focus on others during spring vacation, not themselves
The Houston Chronicle – March 12 2005
… For more than a week, they will work with the JDC learning about programs for a Jewish community that has struggled during the South American country's economic crisis. In Buenos Aires, the group will pack supplies and help make toys at a center for babies and mothers. In a small town, the students will paint classrooms at a Jewish school and open up the Jewish theater for a music performance… "We just think it is really important that they understand that there are Jews outside North America that have needs, and that (it's important) they build a connection to the (greater Jewish) family," said Naomi Sage, who is overseeing the trip to Argentina for the New York City-based committee…

Group seeks more clinics to aid disabled
The Jerusalem Post – March 8 2005
Talia Hahn has a dream. She would like to see a string of gynecological centers serving disabled women stretching across the country. Recently, her organization, the Forum of Women with Disabilities for Women with Disabilities, with the financial aid of the JDC and the Pfizer pharmaceutical company, established the first such facility in Beersheba…

Jews Find New Life in Russia
Los Angeles Times – March 2 2005
…International Jewish organizations that now have relatively free entree to Russia are working to combat the years of repression that forced many Jews to hide -- and, in some cases, to forget -- their heritage. The Russian Jewish population is "one of the most assimilated in the world," said Sam Amiel, deputy director of the JDC in Moscow. "In today's demographic post-Soviet makeup, if you happen to find a Jewish person who happens to be married to another Jewish person, it's probably ... an accident," he said. Amiel is amazed that there are any public Jews at all, after the decades of strife they endured on Soviet soil. "Try to understand how deeply, how tightly they would have had to hold on to something, some piece of knowledge from their grandparents, whatever, to walk into a synagogue today," he said. "In essence, it's a modern-day miracle..."

Riding the wave
Jerusalem Post – February 17 2005
On a small kibbutz on the Northern coast, the only Israeli so far to ever win an Olympic gold medal comes to greet me … Fridman recently began to participate in a project sponsored by JDC-Israel to teach windsurfing to high-risk teenagers. He hopes that the project will give them self-confidence and something to dream about and be proud of. Arnon Mantver, the CEO of JDC-Israel, says that Fridman was asked to help because they wanted to bring someone into the educational process who would project positive characteristics and set a good example for the youth at risk. "Gal Fridman was the perfect candidate to show the kids that a strong will and a good self-image can change the direction of their lives," he explains. Other than Fridman, volunteer Navy Seals will also be working with the teenagers to teach them water activities and basic skills...

Filipino-American effort to rescue Jews honored
The New York Times – February 15 2005
…Through his efforts and those of three of his brothers, about 1,200 Jews from Germany and Austria eventually found sanctuary in the Philippines in the late 1930s…Frieder combed lists of imperiled Jews for needed skills and advertised in German newspapers. The brothers and the JDC arranged visas, jobs and housing and raised thousands of dollars for sustenance...

Local rabbis find reemerging Jewish community in Ukraine
Washington Jewish Week– February 15 2005
…"It was incredible to go there, thinking you were going to see the ashes of the Jewish people, but instead, you were meeting and engaging with a living Jewish community," said Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk… Stops on the Odessa tour included a couple of Bayit Cham (Warm Houses). Funded by the UJC and run by the JDC, these apartment meeting places draw different interest groups. "We sat across the room from women who had saved or whose families had saved Jews," said the Reston rabbi, who said the seven shared "their hopes not only for their own children, but for the children and the grandchildren of Jews whom they saved, now living in Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and places all over the world..."

Sderot residents get help
JTA – January 24 2005
North American Jews contributed $2 million to help residents of an Israeli town often hit by Palestinian rocket attacks… A task force headed by the JAFI will oversee the project. The task force also includes the UJC, the JDC, the National Insurance Institute and a "trauma coalition" established by the UJA-Federation of New York. The program is intended to deal with trauma and post-traumatic reactions among residents of Sderot and other communities bordering the Gaza Strip. It will focus particularly on children, senior citizens, recent immigrants and special-needs populations...

Maverick NY philanthropist aids Israeli Druse
Jerusalem Post – January 20 2005
…For the past three years, Everett has been the primary funding source of a project of the JDC. The $ 2 million she has given to date has gone toward helping young Druse pass Israel's high school matriculation exam and giving Druse women the skills to work as beauticians… "You are doing a great service for women, for whom traditionally it has always been frowned on even to leave their village to study," said Alham Mand 'ar, a young woman who graduated from the cosmetics course...

Strive aims to lessen strife
Crain's New York Business – January 17 2005
…A job-training organization that started in the basement of an East Harlem housing project, Strive is opening two franchises in different cities in Israel this spring. The nonprofit-which teaches people how to behave in the workplace-will target groups with the highest unemployment rates in Israel, such as Hasidim, Israeli Arabs, and Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. The JDC, an organization that helps Jewish communities around the world, arranged for Strive's foray in Israel and may help the nonprofit enter other regions as well...

JDC's century of relief assistance
Canadian Jewish News – January 13 2005
The JDC, a relief organization with nearly 100 years of experience and UJA Federations overseas partner, is no stranger to providing assistance in devastating situation…In the wake of hurricanes that hit some of the poorest areas of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the summer of 2004, JDC assisted other organizations in providing emergency supplies on a non-sectarian basis… In 1994, JDC, the Jewish Coalition, and the African-American Institute raised funds for the provision of desperately needed emergency assistance for some two million Rwandans. In 1991, during the Gulf War, JDC helped to provide 6,000 residents of the Silopi refugee camp in southeast Turkey with health services, school, recreational facilities and supplies including winter clothing...

When disaster strikes
Jerusalem Post – January 7 2005
When disaster strikes, Jews are there to help… Similarly, the JDC, American Jewry's central address for overseas aid, regularly funds projects in disaster areas that have no connection to Jews or Judaism. After an earthquake in Turkey several years ago, the JDC worked with the Israeli government in rebuilding a school in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. In Kosovo, the JDC rebuilt a mosque…"It's a reminder to the population that the Jews were there and the Jews helped," said Steven Schwager, executive vice president of the JDC. "We leave behind something long- term that the populace will remember." Schwager said he expected the JDC would collect between $ 6 million and $ 10 million for tsunami relief in Southeast Asia, most of it through North American Jewish federations...

When Mideast meets Midwest
Jerusalem Post – January 9 2005
Like Jews everywhere, Arab Americans worry about their health… A Jerusalem-born, Ramallah-raised Palestinian researcher who heads a large voluntary Arab-American health center called ACCESS in a Detroit suburb recently visited… Jerusalem's Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, who nodded their heads with understanding from their experience working with Jewish immigrant groups and Arab communities in Israel…The institute recently launched a pioneering multi-year initiative to research key health issues in that population's health. This program, according to institute researchers, "will provide significant information which will contribute to the development of effective policies and services, the reduction of gaps in health care between the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel, and increased awareness among policy makers and service providers of the unique characteristics and health needs of the Arab community..."

Ganon bashes Florida's pre-K plan: State rep cites program in Israel as 'model of high-quality education'
Boca Raton News – January 6 2005
…When Gannon visited Israel, she said she saw "the perfect model of high-quality pre-kindergarten education… Parents And Children Together (PACT), the program in Israel, was created in 1998 by the JDC. Today, more than 90 percent of Ethiopian-Israeli children living in Israel attend. PACT, Gannon said, provides more than six hours of daily instruction, requires accredited teachers and offers transportation to and from school.

Taub Center: Child poverty will reach 28% this year
Globes – January 3 2005
The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel warns that child poverty in Israel will reach 28% in 2004, as a result of cuts in welfare allowances. The Taub Center reported that old age pensions had been eroded by 15%, compared with the average standard of living, income supplements by 24%, and child allowances by 32%... The Taub Center is an independent institute funded by the JDC and other private entities...