American Friends of Neve Hanna Inc
Changing Children's Lives
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
For almost 50 years, Neve Hanna Children’s Home has provided a loving home for children from distressed family circumstances in the south of Israel. They are the children of Russian, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern immigrants and native-born Israelis. By providing a nurturing and supportive family environment, Neve Hanna offers these at-risk youth the chance to grow beyond the circumstances from which they emerged. With its therapeutic programs, leisure time activities and projects, Neve Hanna Children’s Home strives to meet all the physical, emotional, mental and educational needs of its children.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Horticultural Therapy / Sandy's Greenhouse
The children learn and work in the field of Horticulture, involving the practice of growing and caring for plants for therapeutic and educational reasons. A horticultural therapist works with the children who benefit mentally and physically from the interaction of plants. Children develop a greater sense of self- worth and confidence. Gardening provides a socially acceptable stress release and acts as a creative outlet.
Our children were involved enthusiastically for over a year in our greenhouse project, when we soon realized that we should explore gardening/horticultural therapy for the mental and physical well-being of our children and teenagers.
Petting Zoo (Animal Therapy)
Neve Hanna was among the first children’s homes in Israel to offer animal-assisted therapy. It is a well-established program that Neve Hanna has offered almost 20 years. Today, about a quarter of all therapy programs Neve Hanna offers take place in the therapeutic Petting Zoo.
The children referred to the animal-assisted program are between 6 and 15 years old. Due to their severely traumatic past in early childhood often combined with special needs due to their migration background, they are in need of a non-verbal therapy form. Animal-assisted therapy allows them to learn to “talk” about their traumatic experiences and learn or re-learn vital social skills in order to ensure their healthy development (e.g. relationships based on trust, care, empathy and love).
A variety of animals inhabit it, including hamsters, gerbils, goats, rabbits, mules, snakes, iguanas, turtles, fish, parrots, geese, hens, peacocks, meerkats and many more.
Yeladudes Bakery
The in-house bakery is an integral part of daily life of the children’s home. Founded as an educational project with self-supportive aspects, it offers the children the chance to work at the bakery; from preparing dough to the baking process. They also learn professional aspects of running a business.
Path to Bread
A unique program designed for children and parents to improve their relationship, with less stress, interaction and communication by learning to bake bread together. Children and their parents learn the art of baking bread and pastries. They are introduced to ingredients, nutrition matters and healthy diet.
Teenager Empowerment Program
This group program helps teens who are in need of intensive and frequent support to facilitate a framework to deal with questions concerning development. Within this framework we cover subjects such as self-image, friendships and partnerships, drugs and addictions, sexuality, social media and privacy. Our program’s goal is to provide the teens with the necessary tools and skills to enable them to live a healthy adult life once they leave Neve Hanna.
STREETLIGHT
Streetlight operates by the motto: “The best thing in the world is to do good deeds for others.
Teens can help make a difference to others by giving back to the community. The children plan, fundraise, purchase and pack parcels with food supplies for disadvantaged families in the community. The program teaches our children the value of young leadership, social activism, community outreach, volunteerism, tolerance, mutual respect, friendship, teamwork and giving and sharing.
The children can join Streetlight, at the age of 12 or 13, after their B’nai Mitzvah. They take care of all the logistics, the fundraising, planning, purchasing and packing of the parcels with basic food supplies for families in need in their area as well as the distribution. They commit their free time volunteering two evenings a week. One evening is educational learning and discussing social activism, tolerance, mutual respect, giving and sharing, friendship and how they can grow into young leadership roles.
The Neve Hanna Library
Founded as an educational self-support project. There is a professional librarian to supervise, educate and offer on the job vocational training for our teens. The Library fosters a love of reading and study, discovery of subjects and authors, provides a new vocational training, instills interpersonal skills and inspires the pursuit of higher education.
Our campaign goal is to raise $80,000 needed to expand the library space already built, fill the shelves with additional books that are timely, important and inspiring, and to professionally staff the library.
A book that inspires a Neve Hanna child to become the next Israeli astronaut or physician, novelist or painter, teacher or social worker, could be one that you buy and donate.
Ziv Neurim
The Path of the Sea program works with 30 teenage boys and girls in need of intensive support in this phase of their teen development. Professionally guided group activities on the beach and in the sea are offered through topics such as perseverance, mastering challenges and personal willpower. The youngsters discover new worlds by swimming and rowing, surfing and sailing.
Under the guidance of a skilled marine training team, and our social workers, Isheh and Michal, Ziv Neurim’s approach in its Path of the Sea program is based on strengthening teen self-image, building up their ability to cope with stressful situations, creating positive experiences and encouraging them to persevere and cope with obstacles.
The Core Elements:
Perseverance, Personal coping, Discipline, Personal responsibility, Physical fitness, Self reliance, Team work, Facing fears and challenges, Overcoming obstacles and experience.
The Playground Project
Do you remember your days of swinging and climbing when you were a kid? Our new fundraiser campaign, the Playground Project is all about fun, fun, fun!
Sadly, our playground of 40 years had to be demolished due to safety measures. Our goal is to raise the necessary funds needed to build environmentally friendly wooden installations that would last decades. A place where they can play, climb, hide and seek, explore and learn.
With your help, we can do it! Let's build a playground!
Tzedakah / Tikkun Olam Projects
Is your religious school, synagogue, sisterhood or men’s club looking for a new and meaningful social action project?
Many religious schools, synagogues, sisterhoods and men’s clubs encourage participation in TIKKUN OLAM/TZEDAKAH projects as part of their educational programming. Please consider partnering with Neve Hanna Children’s Home in Kiryat Gat, Israel for your next TIKKUN OLAM/TZEDAKAH project.
Learn more on how you can get involved and take on a mitzvah project in support of the Neve Hanna community. Visit our website: www.afnevehanna.org
Where we work
Awards
The Golden Dove of Peace Award 2015
N/A
External reviews

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Our Sustainable Development Goals
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Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
With its successful therapeutic programs and projects, Neve Hanna Children’s Home strives to meet all the physical, emotional, mental and educational needs of its children. Neve Hanna enriches its children with a wide variety of individualized therapeutic programs and extracurricular activities --- providing a nurturing and supportive family environment. Neve Hanna offers these children the chance to grow beyond the circumstances from which they emerged.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
We help raise the essential funds for state of the art therapies such as play therapy, animal and riding therapy as well as art therapy enable children to deal with events and to cope with fears and conflicts that are often impossible to talk about and to put into words. In a child-friendly way, solutions to conflicts can be found and social behavior can be practiced.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
American Friends of Neve Hanna raises funds to help provide the Neve Hanna Children's Home psychological services, state of the art therapies, extracurricular activities, social workers, special tutors, religious instruction, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, holiday outings, birthday parties, services of a rabbi who educates and guides the children in their spiritual development, and the maintenance and development of the campus and so much more.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Neve Hanna Children's Home is among the institutions which were allowed to fully function even in times of severe restrictions during Covid-19 pandemic. Its emergency program worked with no cases of infection and “kept the children on track.” Nevertheless, the situation requires special measures, since traumatized children need help with a variety of emotional, mental, educational, social and other challenges. From mid-May to mid-June, we all had to learn to live alongside the virus and organize accordingly. During this time, Neve Hanna Children's Home started to reunite the children with their parents and integrate daycare children, who during the crisis could not come in, and are now back into the routine. Presently, we pay special attention to psychological needs and schooling, since the NH children start off with a gap. Education is a major aspect giving them a brighter outlook into the future, a chance for social mobility, breaking the cycles they came from.
In December 2020, American Friends of Neve Hanna founded and launched the Buy a Book, Build a Library campaign to raise funds for the new library at the Neve Hanna Children's Home. The Neve Hanna Library will have many benefits: Foster a love of study and reading, provide a new kind of vocational training, instill interpersonal skills and inspire the pursuit of higher education. The Library will serve as an educational project and a self-support project. There will be a professional Librarian to supervise and educate the children and offer on the job training for our teens. This will give the teens the education, experience and job skills to pursue a career in Library Science. Under the tutelage of a professional in library science, they’ll learn to care for and catalog books, and what it takes to become librarians themselves.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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American Friends of Neve Hanna Inc
Board of directorsas of 04/13/2023
Janet Tobin
American Friends of Neve Hanna
Term: 1991 -
Irwin Tobin
American Friends of Neve Hanna
Term: 1991 -
Samantha Agin
Evelyn Auerbach z"l
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Heddy Belman
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Ilene Berman
Rabbi Joseph Brodie
Erica D. Goldman Brodie
Phyllis Brody
Deborah Bruce
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Burton Citak
Lawrence Cohn
Rabbi Robert Dobrusin
Rabbi Emeritus at Beth Israel Congregation
Debbi Kaner Goldich
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Allan Gottesman
Gottesman, Bomser & Company, P.A. / Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs
Rabbi Michael & Cindy Greenbaum
Susan Hammer
Weichert Realtor Associate
Judith Horowitz
Donald Horowitz
Joan Kase Riger
Sandra Koppell
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Rafi Lipschitz
Investment Management at Shelbourne
Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner
Senior Rabbi at Jacksonville Jewish Center
Margie Miller
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Stanley Miller
Gloria and Sidney Danziger Foundation
Ahuva Oko
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik
Rabbinical Assembly
Ellen Shapiro
Visual Language LLC
Dr. Aviva Tobin Hess
Mt. Sinai Medical Center
Noam Tobin Hess
Robin Tobin Hess
Gilit Ullmann Stein
Senior Talent Analyst at Del Monte Fresh Produce Company
Rita Wertlieb
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Barry Wertlieb
Rabbi Ellen Wolintz Fields
Women's League for Conservative Judaism
Debbie Zaluda
Puzzle Israel / Via Sabra - Unfolding Israel
Board leadership practices
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Not applicable -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Not applicable -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Not applicable -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Not applicable
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data