As a wave of dangerous winter weather grips Eastern Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union, the death toll is rising and rescue crews are evacuating people from snowblocked villages in Serbia and Bosnia. In Bulgaria, temperatures plunged to their lowest since records began 100 years ago.

JDC immediately activated its emergency winter response system to supplement the critical care it already gives to tens of thousands of Jewish elderly and needy children through it's winter relief program.

Especially in the hardest-hit areas of the Balkans and Ukraine, JDC is currently:
-Furnishing heating fuel, blankets, warm jackets, clothes, and boots
-Providing food and heating supplies to those who cannot leave home
-Checking in on those who need additional medical care

Read the full press release here.

Lisi, a 29-year-old volunteer organizer in Istanbul, says, “Our community is small, but our potential is enormous.”

Like many of her contemporaries, not just in Turkey but in many parts of the world, Lisi grew up loving Shabbat celebrations at her grandparents' house, going to Jewish school, and taking part in youth group. But by the time she graduated from university, questions about her Jewish identity and whether she had the tools she needed to command her future began to arise.

Find out how JDC’s leadership training helped her find answers and go on to recruit hundreds of unaffiliated young people to Istanbul’s Jewish community.

Struck by tragedy, 23-year-old Avigail was raising her three young sons—all below the age of 10—alone. Homeless, without job skills, and not even ten years of completed schooling, she was unable to fend for herself and her children.

Find out how JDC’s employment training program for disadvantaged Israeli women empowered this Kavkazi immigrant.

To survive Moldova’s harsh January snowstorms, Tatiana, 11, and her family of five huddle desperately around the sole gas stove in their dilapidated apartment. The family’s two-room home has no kitchen or bathroom, and is in an old Soviet-style building that has no electricity, running water, or heat.

Tatiana’s parents struggle to make ends meet on one income and the prospects of finding work during an economic slump in the poorest country in Europe seem dismal.

Learn how JDC’s winter relief assistance is ensuring this family—and thousands like them throughout the region—will make it through these hardest of times.

Fabienne, a Haitian 8th grader, dreams of becoming a doctor and helping her people. But her prospects for an education in Haiti—the poorest country in the western hemisphere, even prior to the devastating 2010 earthquake—were grim. She used to spend three hours every day just getting to and from her nearest school, leaving little time for homework or to just be a kid.

Today all that has changed. Find out how JDC’s new middle school in Zoranje is giving Fabienne and scores of Haiti’s teenagers hope for their future.

Read about JDC's disaster relief activities in Haiti and eJewish Philanthropy's coverage of our work two years on.