Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:42
NGO Impact Israel helps Hundreds of at-risk youth from around the world
Leanne's background has always been working with young people to empower them and to build confidence and give them a life. And she originally was with an organization called City of Peace, and then she was at Southern California Foster and Family Adoption Agency. And I worked with her when she was there actually to get some of the foster youth connected to some people who were from a whole different reality, holocaust survivors, a lot of them. And we did a storytelling project that was so amazing
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:24
First things first. Can you give us your sort of elevator pitch, as they call it, to help us understand the basic mission and vision and values of impact? Israel so we know more about the organization? I'm going to link the URL here so people can go to the website. And thanks for helping us out. Just with the overall overview
And this has, as I said, it's grown into the Villageway educational initiatives, where we are partnering with educators and educational communities that reflect the diversity of the Israeli society. So this includes secular, religious, ultra Orthodox and Arab populations. And we work with academic high schools. We work with vocational high schools and youth villages
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:17
Can you give us a basic demographic breakdown? Where are these young people coming from? How do they find you? Or do you find them? And what's the process of getting them from where they are to joining Impact Israel and living in the village?
And essentially, we only accept students who want to be at the village if they have been told that they have to come by their parents or by social workers. We don't just accept them. We want them to make the decision that this is something that they've chosen and that they want to do. And it's a pretty rigorous program. It's dealing with a lot of therapeutic work and getting the kids to delve into their own lives
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:46
How does that filter down to the experience of a participant in Yamin ord and the Village Way and impact Israel? I keep on using them interchangeably, but I know that there's programs within programs. But just understanding the backdrop of being inside the land of Israel
And so for the most part, the students that attend the village are Jewish. There are some students who want to really search what that looks like and feel what that looks like
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:43
And do they have several counselors, or is it a group experience? Or what's the protocol for helping someone who wants to go into college? And how early do they start making that decision?
And also it helps them to make the next decision of do they want to go to the army or do they want to go to university or as I said, to vocational studying as well. So it's an ongoing process. And as I said in the very beginning, the concept is that we're with them all the way, and we still have graduates who come to our graduate programs every year
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:31
And finally, can you tell us a great story, somebody who's been through the program that you really think is exemplary of the impact Impact Israel has on a person's life? Because I know it's a singularity that really helps people see the unique stories behind an NGO like Impact Israel. Can you talk about one person who just really moves you and shows that this is a really important organization to know about and to give, if people are able to do that? And thank you so much
She came to spend some time with us and to speak to some of the people that we work with here. She's 21 years old. She is Ukrainian. She chose to come to Yemen ord on her own when she was 14. She was a student in Ukraine, and she was really struggling with sort of fitting in, and she found that she was getting herself into trouble. And she had always had this interest in what it meant to be Jewish
And I wanted to say that the work that we do here in Los Angeles and throughout the United States is focused on raising the funds so that these two incredible programs, yemen Ord and the Villageway Initiatives, can actually achieve the work that they are setting out to do in Israel. And the focus, again, is on bringing people together who come from very dire situations, who have the ability to come together to be the best humans that they can be in the best way
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:11
But Yamin Ord or Impact Israel is sort of the crystallization for me in my mind of what is possible when we bring diverse lives together to sit and break bread and articulate their dreams and support each other in their dreams and build a structure through which they can grow and become more and more human and compassionate and talented. And that is so beautiful when the sort of the impetus for this whole organization is to be there all the whole journey to be family forever. It's just remarkable