The JDC: Rescuing millions of people worldwide

JDC volunteer, Sam Amiel, meets with JDC partners in the field in Nepal.

First in a series of three.

The JDC, or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is an international organization that helps Jews around the world who are in need. It is the world’s largest humanitarian assistance organization and has embodied the notion that all Jews are responsible for each other. 

With headquarters in New York City, the JDC works in over 70 countries and Israel, providing aid to those in need, rescuing Jews from war-torn areas, and revitalizing Jewish life overseas. In addition, the JDC joins other groups to help rescue victims of global emergencies.

The Jewish Alliance’s Annual Campaign provides core funding for the JDC’s rescue, relief and renewal programs. Here is a look at rescue programs in Nepal:

In April of 2015, the country of Nepal suffered a life-changing earthquake that killed 8,800 people, destroyed over a half-million homes, damaged 280,000 others, and left almost 3 million people in dire need of assistance. These people, even many months later, are still in need of food, water and sanitation, safe learning spaces for their children, and livelihoods.

The JDC sent in its disaster response team, and partnered with other organizations to provide classes and much needed on-the-ground aid. In the case of Mira, these classes saved her, and her family’s, lives.

Mira and her husband live in Kathmandu, Nepal, with their two children. Life for them is hard, but they managed to make ends meet, especially with Mira’s earnings from knitting sweaters at home.

When the earthquake hit, Mira and her family not only lost their home, but also Mira’s livelihood and her contribution to the family’s income. The JDC came to help the people of Kathmandu, and Mira learned of a training class offered by the JDC and another foundation. The program helps women become stronger and more resilient for themselves and their families by providing tools lost in the earthquake that would help reestablish their livelihoods, training in home-based skills with a higher-earning potential, increasing access to childcare, and counseling.  Mira has remained involved with this class, and has since been able to, with her family, rebuild their home and lives.

But the JDC’s help does not stop there. In another part of Nepal, volunteers with the JDC’s disaster response team visit villages that have lost more than just their homes. One such volunteer, Sam Amiel, described visiting a village that had just lost a teenage girl as “heart-wrenching.” The girl’s name was Muna, and she was crushed while seeking protection under a bed.

Amiel noted that the village school was closed for a month after the earthquake so it could be used as a refuge.

“The village school in Manikhel, 8,500 feet above sea level, served hundreds of children walking two hours each way from across the hilly region. The school is closed for a month, serving as a relief distribution point for 1,500 people across 10 villages. When I visited, 15 families were living in the school, with many others forming makeshift structures from tarp, tin, stones, and wood salvaged from the piles of the rubble,” he wrote in his blog.

Amiel and his team worked tirelessly to assure the Nepalese that they were going to be taken care of.

“I saw wide-scale destruction in some of the hardest-hit districts in Nepal. It is extremely encouraging to know our partners … take the same community-based approach as all of us at JDC when providing relief and assistance. We all fully believe in long-term sustainable impact for those most in need,” Amiel noted.

You can help people like Mira, and Muna’s family. You can also help people like Sam Amiel do the most important work – working for humanity.  Your gift to the Jewish Alliance Annual Campaign can rescue the millions of people in the world who need it most.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Subsequent articles will describe the JDC’s worldwide relief and renewal programs.

HILLARY SCHULMAN is a development associate in philanthropy at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.