- Israel

JDC's MATOV Helps Impoverished Families Have a Sweet New Year

JDC’s MATOV Helps Many Families Celebrate Rosh Hashana When it came time to prepare the festive meal for Rosh Hashana last year, more famillies than ever in Netanya had sufficient ingredients with which to cook. In previous years, special holiday food packages had been supplied by various NGOs working within the community, operating independently off of growing lists of needy clients. These organizations often overlapped in whom they served; other families were left without any assistance.

"Distributing food is power. Nobody wishes to share lists - not the NGOs among themselves and not with the municipality," explained the JDC coordinator of the MATOV (Volunteer Coordination Support System) program. "Our contribution, with our reputation as the ‘honest broker’, was to be able to bring everyone together around one table."

A partnership between JDC, the Ministry of Welfare, Zionism 2000, MATAN and Ruach Tova (Good Spirit), MATOV was created to help increase the local volunteer capacity and cooperation between non-profit organizations and the public and business sectors. It maps local needs and the organizations and services who utilize volunteers, and then brings voluntary and local government agencies together to pool resources, coordinate activities and develop new initiatives. This teamwork within the non-profit sector becomes increasingly essentail in order to fill the void that is being created by the increase in needs of Israel’s citizens as the ability of the Israeli government to meet them is being eroded.

MATOV is helping to increase local communities' capacity to care for people in need by: 1) Improving the professionalism of non-profit organizations; 2) Strengthening the cooperation among organizations that utilize volunteers; 3) Maximizing the potential of volunteers; and 4) Increasing the number of volunteers who are active in the community.

MATOV has already begun building community networks and infrastructure for the long term. In Netanya, for example, once the first food distribution was successfully made for the High Holidays last year, the community was able to duplicate the process on their own for Pesach. Or-akiva and Sderot also piloted the Rosh Hashana food distribution last year.

Currently operating in ten local municipalities — Afula, Arad, Dimona, Hadera, Kiryat Gat, Migdal Ha-Emek, Netanya, Or-akiva, Sderot, and Yokneam — MATOV’s unifying hand is helping to ensure that all families in need in Israel receive adequate food and resources with which to fully celebrate the Jewish holidays.