Yaron Tsalach
JDC-Israel Area Head, Immigrant Youth Education

Meet Yaron and learn about his roles as the JDC-Israel Area Head for Immigrant Youth Education.

Yaron was born in the Israeli southern development town of Kiryat Malachi, to immigrant parents who arrived in Israel in the 1950's.

After completing his studies, Yaron served in the Israel Defense Forces as a commander in the logistics unit for soldiers who were identified by the army as suffering from adjustment difficulties. Through four years of army service, Yaron developed a body of knowledge and experience in dealing with those from peripheral populations in Israel.

This challenging interaction with these populations attracted Yaron within his civilian life, as well, and upon completing his studies at Hebrew University in geography, he continued this path working with youth and served as an educational coordinator in a program for alienated youth in Jerusalem. This program was an initiative of JDC-Israel and served as an important station for these youth, who had been thrown out of normative education frameworks, and through an intensive year-long program Yaron accompanied them and helped them acquire the skills to integrate them back into the normative school system.

Out of his belief in the program, Yaron moved to the southern development town of Kiryat Gat to replicate the program in the local school there. There he developed a program to prevent school dropout and appropriate ways to work with difficult youth. The program still functions today.

Through his work at JDC, Yaron served as manager of a project that provided assistance to schools on how to work with immigrant youth on a day to day basis and aided students and their parents to better understand the Israeli educational system. It also aided the educational system to better understand the various cultures from which the Israeli population is built.

Today, Yaron serves as Area Head for JDC's division for Immigrant Youth Education. He is responsible for the direction of a number of programs, which enable the JDC and its partners in the Israeli government to ease the way for dealing with the challenges of immigrant youth, running the gamut from disconnected youth to youth with the potential for excellence.

Yaron's program area functions in partnership with many government offices and other professional institutions.