JWI & The Children's Home
The Children’s Home in Israel is Jewish Women International’s longest standing philanthropic program. Established in 1943 as a haven for children shattered by the Holocaust, the Children’s Home now cares for Israel's most emotionally disturbed children: children damaged by emotional abuse, neglect, trauma from constant warfare in the country, and parents who are emotionally unstable or addicted to drugs. For many, this is a last resort, after the children’s families and other institutions have given up on them.
In the early 1950s, B’nai Brith Women (now known as JWI) purchased land for the home in the Beit Vagan section of Jerusalem, and accepted responsibility for the operation of the Home. Over the years, JWI members and supporters have lovingly demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the residents of this unique institution. They raised money for the children's daily care, visited the Home on JWI missions and family vacations, and developed personal relationships with the children at the Home.
Throughout the years, JWI has raised millions of dollars to support the Home. These efforts have a been a result of personal gifts and chapter giving, and have been a focus of JWI chapter programing for more than six decades.
A proud new chapter in the life of the Children's Home began in March 2009, when the Children’s Home moved to a new campus in Kyriat Yearim. JWI is the lead donor for the new Home, underwriting the purchase of the new land and a significant portion of the construction.
“I think you are doing the most important thing that anybody can do. We have in this city more people who went through trauma than in any other society in the world‐ people who went through concentration camps, people who were partisans in the forests, people who had great difficulty emigrating here from different countries and changing their entire culture and values. The results are very often children with great difficulties. It will take a long time for all of these people to become more or less a society that can live in peace within itself. It all comes out in the next generation, in children whom you educate and bring to good citizenship. You take care of a great number of these children with remarkable success.”
—Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem, at the 1990 dedication of the annex of the B'nai Brith Women Residential Treatment Center