15/06/2025
Dear Friends of the Forgotten People Fund,
The FPF is a partner charity of MyIsrael and we are appealing to you to join us in the MyIsrael hour Matching Fund Campaign on June 15th and June 16th in order to double your contribution!
The proceeds will primarily go towards scholarships to enable the students to professions and escape from poverty.
Here is a description of our program:
Our scholarship program is based on the realization that the youth of the Ethiopian community must support themselves as they cannot rely on their parents for assistance as middle class students do. Additionally, they are used to contributing to the family expenses as the parents rarely are able to fully support the family needs.
The result is that the students must work while studying, resulting in a lack of time to devote to their studies. Our scholarship is conceived as reducing the amount of time they have to work so they can concentrate on their studies. We typically see a great improvement in grades between the pre-scholarship studies and after they receive help.
The scholarship is set at NIS12,000 annually - NIS1000 per month. This is just enough to reduce their work hours so they have time to study.
Each student is unique in their needs: some use the funds for tuition payments, others for dormitory or rent costs, and others for food via supermarket vouchers. One of our early recipients told us later that when he heard that he could get a stipend in supermarket vouchers, he thought that was weird! But he soon realized that it meant that he wouldn't have the stress of worrying if he would have food to eat at the end of the month. As we believe that the students know what is best for them, they stipulate how they wish to receive the scholarship funds.
Since our overall goal is to assist the youth escape from the cycle of poverty, we only provide scholarships for those studying professions which meet two basic criteria:
1. There is a registry/license which is required to work in the profession.
2. The profession has a significant number of positions available at a decent salary.
Therefore we support fields such as engineering (ืื ืืกื) including junior engineering (ืื ืืกืื), nursing, social work, accounting, teaching (if they are studying education they must be going on for a teaching credential) para-medical professions such as speech and hearing (audiology) and dental hygiene, and computer science.
To illustrate the effectiveness of our scholarship program, during the covid closure in summer, 2020, we received a huge grant via MyIsrael to provide food relief to those who lost income due to the closure. With the help of the Netanya community services, who served as our field workers (as we weren't leaving our homes), we provided supermarket vouchers to 1500 families - about 50% of the Netanya Ethiopian community! Out of those 1500 recipients only 3 had received scholarships in prior years! One was a kindergarten teacher who had changed kindergartens just before covid struck and did not have tenure in her new one. (She is completing her MA with no assistance from us and is now accredited for didactic evaluations). The second had studied education but did not go on for a teaching credential (She has completed her teaching credential in Special Education and happily has received tenure as a special education teacher!) The third is an accountant who had medical problems and had used up her sick leave so she really should have been in our regular assistance database rather than the covid food relief one. Thus we have evidence that our program truly assists the students to escape from the cycle of poverty!
The campaign will begin Sunday, June 15th. It will continue until Monday, June 16th at 9pm UK and 11pm Israel times.
PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS PROVIDED BELOW TO HELP RAISE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE ON JUNE 15/16:
DUE TO THE WAR SITUATION, THE MATCHING FUND CAMPAIGN IS OPEN!
For donations is Israeli NIS or British ยฃ please use: www.charityextra.com/myisrael/fpf
For donations in US $ only please use: www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/collect/donation-targets/151788
Only donations made through these links will qualify for MyIsrael matching funds.
Receipts will be issued by the MyIsrael charity.
May we all be safe, healthy and happy, particularly in light of the current Iranian conflict due to which we shall need even more funds!
With great thanks and gratitude in advance for your generosity and helping us advance the lot of the Netanya Ethiopian community.
Every donation will be matched by Myisrael
