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First education, then health - now welfare faces privatization By Ruth Sinai Tags: welfare, Israel The history of the Association for the Advancement of Education, Health and Welfare in Jaffa, a charitable organization whose scope has expanded greatly since its founding as an after-school center, is one measure of the changes in how Israel deals with poverty. The country has gone from advocating government-level social change to relying on private charities to provide food for the needy - a development that stands out particularly strongly as Passover rapidly approaches. When the organization first was founded, it was limited to providing a place for children to go to after school, eat a hot meal and get help with their homework. Over the years, it became clear that this was not enough, and the association opened a dental clinic. Then a volunteer saw a child sneaking his hot meal into his bag - to give to his little brother, who hadn't eaten in four days. Now the organization hands out 700 food packages to needy families twice a month. Before the holidays, it distributes double the usual number of food packages, in response to requests from the municipality and organizations that care for the needy, including drug addicts and people with HIV. Advertisement "Food distribution has increased because people want to be together, to set a nice table, and the public is also awakening and wants to donate," said Shalom Portovich, whose father David Portovich founded the association after immigrating from the United States 25 years ago. So much food is donated before Passover that some of it is placed in storerooms and distributed during the year, when the public is less open to contributing. Not only has the number of people requesting food packages increased, so has the number of organizations handing out the food. The Israeli Center for Third-Sector Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found about 170 non-profit associations distributing food across the country in 2005; in 2007, it found 270 groups distributing food and clothes and some 450 others involved in welfare services, including food packages. To some extent, the rise in non-profits reflects the increase in poverty. Since the National Insurance Institute benefit payments were cut starting in 2002, the poverty rate has increased from 19 percent to 25 percent and the number of poor children has risen from 618,000 to 804,000. Latet - Israeli Humanitarian Aid, which provides food to 120 non-profit associations, estimates that some 200,000 families - close to 1 million people - receive food for the holidays. And these are only half the poor families in Israel. The JDC-Brookdale Institute research center found that 22 percent of Israelis have trouble ensuring a regular food supply. The problem has worsened in the last few months, due to the rise in the price of vegetables, fruit, bread, milk and electricity. The price of matza has increased by a quarter, said Latet general manager Eran Weintraub. So is there hunger in Israel? "Every time, I'm astounded anew by this skepticism. It just proves that people are not connected with what is happening on the ground," said Weintraub. "It also proves that people are fed up with hearing about hunger, because there is quite a lot of poverty and quite a lot of charities. People seem to have had enough of hunger." It appears that Weintraub may be using the word "hunger" to shake up the donors. "Donations have dropped by 12 percent, and the value of dollar donations from abroad has seriously eroded," he said. Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, who heads the National Insurance Institute's research department, uses a slightly less loaded term: nutrition insecurity, a phrase coined by American academics to describe food shortages in industrialized countries. "There is a clear correlation between poverty and nutrition insecurity," said Gottlieb. "Anyone who says the two are not related is doing discredit to the poverty statistics." Research that Gottlieb conducted in 2003 and 2006 found that about a third of Israelis relinquish essential food items in order to buy other essential items. "The statistics clearly show that the larger a family is, the greater the concessions over essential food," said Gottlieb. "An industry of non-profit associations has developed here because the poor are relinquishing essential food and the government is relinquishing its responsibility toward them." The food packages distributed by Portovich's organization, worth about NIS 600 a month during the year and NIS 1,000 for Passover, are intended to reduce the extent of such concessions. They also help to combat what some, despite the term Gottlieb prefers, call hunger. "Parents who don't want their kids to be sent home from boarding school for the weekend because there isn't any food in the house - is that hunger?" asked a volunteer in Portovich's organization. "Not in the African sense, but yes in the Israeli sense." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Breaking with the ZOA Is Harvard University's Progressive Jewish Alliance inciting against Israel? Rising in the polls New survey finds Nasrallah is the most admired leader in the Arab world.   1.   IRRESPONSABLE GOVNMT. WHEREVER 16:14  |  Robert 16/04/08

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