Wednesday, December 20, 2023 • 5 PM Israel Time| 10 AM EST
Maayan Hoffman, Deputy CEO - Strategy & Innovation for the Jerusalem Post, speaks with Nicole Yoder, Vice President for Aid and Aliyah of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), about the importance of Pitchon-Lev.
“The Aliyah and Aid Department of the ICEJ deals with all the social projects that we do across Israel, and it’s an opportunity for many Christians around the world who love the people of Israel to be involved in a very practical way,” explains Yoder, who has worked with the organization for many years. “What I’ve always loved about Pitchon-Lev,” she says, “is that they want to do something to help the next generation so that they won’t need to come and get the support they offer to so many.”
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Pitchon-Lev helps break the cycle of poverty, including its centers in Rishon LeZion and Carmiel that provide food, clothing, and appliances; rights centers that assist aid recipients with information, guidance, and direction on housing, health, handling debts employee rights, and legal assistance; and its educational empowerment initiatives for youth that assists at-risk-youth from the socio-geographical periphery.
After the October 7 massacre, the ICEJ supplied Pitchon-Lev with a refrigerated truck that it uses to bring food to evacuees throughout Israel. In addition, ICEJ volunteers have been working daily, packing boxes of food and supplies that are delivered to evacuees and IDF soldiers.
Yoder explains that for Christian Zionists, helping Israel is essential. “We live here. We want to do what we can to help. It’s incredibly inspiring to be a part of it and to rub shoulders with Israelis from all over the country. You have the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we’re all here together for a common cause.’”
Pitchon-Lev is unique in that it is an organization that plans for the future, says Yoder. “They’ve been very, very proactive and very busy preparing a plan for how we can deal with poverty and make the future better for families across this nation. Poverty is not anybody’s destiny. There’s a better destiny out there, and Pitchon-Lev is an incredibly critical organization that is helping make that dream become a reality.”
Pitchon-Lev provides food parcels to 6,000 families in need on a weekly basis, including single people, the disabled, the elderly, new immigrants, families with many children, the unemployed, employed persons, single-parent families, and single soldiers. Yet Pitchon-Lev is far more than an aid organization. It is a field organization, providing direct assistance daily to those in need.
Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, Pitchon-Lev has been at the forefront of providing emergency assistance to Israel’s security forces and survivors of the Hamas terror attack and established a logistics center for receiving and distributing donations of aid for security forces and evacuees. The Knesset has designated Pitchon-Lev as a recommended agency for donations both from Israel and abroad during the war. This is the first time in the history of the Knesset that it has designated a charitable organization in such a fashion.
Pitchon Lev has been working in collaboration with the Israeli government to establish a law that will establish a national authority for the fight against poverty that will better address the needs of the 1.8 million Israelis living below the poverty line. This epitomizes Pitchon-Lev – raising the issue of poverty and speaking up for those who are unable to speak on their own behalf.
Since the beginning of the war, Pitchon-Lev has been one of the organizations standing at the forefront of the Israeli home front, in addition to continuing to assist people in need in breaking the cycle of poverty.
This article was written in cooperation with Pitchon-Lev.