Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches has announced the following 2017 Grant Awards:

National Organizations – organizations based outside of Florida with a national impact

The Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center
Sex Trafficking Justice Initiative
$20,000 per year for 2 years beginning in 2016; this is the second year of funding

The Sex Trafficking Justice Initiative is a national program that helps trafficking victims by increasing access to pro bono counsel, increasing the number of civil trafficking cases filed by victims, and increasing the number of vacatur/expungement filings to clear victims’ criminal records.

Moving Traditions
Healthy Sexuality: Creating and Launching a New Model for Jewish Teens
$12,500 per year for 2 years?

The Healthy Sexuality: Creating and Launching a New Model for Jewish Teens initiative is designed to help teens participating in Moving Traditions’ signature programs, Rosh Hodesh and Shevet Achim, and in other Jewish programming to identify and resist sexualization, and to create a healthy Jewish sexual ethic as a guide for their daily lives. They will also hold a national training conference in Summer/Fall 2017 to prepare Jewish educators to facilitate honest and healthy conversations with teens about sex and sexuality and help teens navigate these complicated issues.

Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, Inc. (ORA)
General operating support
$10,000 for one year?

The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) seeks to eliminate abuse in the Jewish divorce process. ORA works within the parameters of Jewish law and civil law to advocate for the timely and unconditional issuance of a get. They pursue their mission through agunah case advocacy, early intervention programs, and educational initiatives for agunah­ prevention.

Unchained at Last
General Support
$17,000 per year for 2 years

Unchained At Last is the only organization in the US dedicated to helping women and girls leave or avoid arranged/forced marriages and rebuild their lives. Unchained provides free legal and social services and emotional support, while also raising awareness and advocating for relevant legislation. Currently, they are working on legislation to raise the minimum age requirement for marriage to be 18 years old in all 50 states.

Israeli Organizations – Advancing the status of women in Israeli society

Adva Center
General operating support
$15,000 per year for 2 years

The Adva Center (founded in 1991) is a non-partisan policy analysis institute whose mandate is to examine Israeli society from the perspective of equality and social justice, through social policy and budget analysis, advocacy work, popular education, and projects designed to empower disadvantaged groups with a special emphasis on women.

ATZUM – Justice Works
Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution (TFHT)
$10,000 per year for 2 years

The Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution aims to alter the misconceptions of Israeli law makers and citizens who tolerate the exploitation of girls and women, promote the passage of legislation that criminalizes the purchase of sexual services and protects the prostituted person. TFHT also includes advocating for a governmental budget to provide the social, psychological, and vocational support required by those exiting prostitution.

Center for the Advancement of Women in the Public Sphere (WIPS)
The Gender Index
$15,500 per year for 2 years

The Gender Index is an innovative tool based on a range of domains and indicators that mirror women’s lives in Israeli society, which were selected in a joint deliberation process in which many women’s organizations participated. It is critical to designing effective policies to promote equality between men and women in Israel in all areas of life. Every year they strive to add new domains and indicators to better depict women’s experiences and interests.

Center for Women‘s Justice
Public Interest Litigation Project
$15,000 per year for 2 years beginning in 2016; this is the second year of funding

The Public Interest Litigation Project works to cement proven legal solutions and pioneer others that help Israeli women escape the prison of get abuse and attain economic and social equality, and bolster the human rights of Israeli women by compelling the State’s legal arm to step in and protect them from religious court infringements.

Itach Maaki – Women Lawyers for Social Justice
Raising the Voices of Marginalized Israeli Women for Economic Justice
$15,000 per year for 2 years

Itach-Maaki is advancing the rights of women from marginalized groups nationwide, including Arab women, Bedouin women, single mothers, low-income working women, women dependent on public assistance, and immigrants via legal aid, policy change, leadership training for women and public advocacy.

Jewish Agency for Israel
Alma Pre-Military Training Academy
$15,000 per year for 2 years?

Alma is an all-female intensive residential learning and physical training pre-army program designed to expand opportunities for young Israeli women who have grown up in challenging backgrounds, and enable them to develop their leadership capabilities and have a more successful future.

Kolech
TELEM Educational Program for Gender Equality
$15,000 a year for two years

The TELEM program is a series of interactive-experiential workshops for teenage girls and boys, designed to boost the confidence and self-image of the participants, helping them to explore and understand the issues of gender roles and sexuality. They learn the warning signals of potentially dangerous partners, and ways to prevent or deal with harassment and sexual and physical abuse.

New Fund for Cinema and Television (NFCT)
NFCT’s Greenhouse Program for Women Filmmakers
$14,000 per year for 2 years

NFCT’s Greenhouse Program for Women Filmmakers brings together 12-16 talented female filmmakers from diverse religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and supports them in the development of compelling documentaries that amplify women’s voices about their own communities and realities, while documenting important contemporary and social issues.

Ohr Torah Stone
The Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership (WIHL)
$15,000 per year for 2 years beginning in 2016; this is the second year of funding

WIHL is a full time, modern Orthodox Israeli enterprise that trains committed women scholars to become rabbis in a way identically broad in depth and scope as that studied by men training for rabbinical ordination. Students are placed in internships with local organizations with the expectations of being hired after their year-long internship is completed.

Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women
Lawyers of Tomorrow
$15,500 a year for two years

Lawyers of Tomorrow is a training course for promising law students to familiarize them with the needs and rights of women under Jewish and Israeli law and encourage them to do pro bono work to assist low-income women as part of their professional creed in the future.?

Shatil – New Israel Fund
Promoting Women within Religious Councils
$15,500 a year for two years

Israel’s religious councils are the implementing arm of the ultra-Orthodox establishment who make decisions on issues related to marriage, synagogue funding, mikvaot (ritual baths), burial arrangements, and kosher licensing. Because religious councils are so powerful and male dominated, Shatil supports a network of women currently serving on local religious councils and encourages and trains women to run.

WEPower
General support
$22,000 per year for 2 years beginning in 2016; this is the second year of funding

Established in the year 2000, WEPOWER is the only nonprofit, non-partisan Israeli NGO that proactively promotes women’s leadership to the high levels of decision-making and elected positions. WEPOWER aims to advance women’s leadership and gender mainstreaming at all levels of society, particularly in the political and public arenas, increasing awareness of gender inequality, creating social change, and a more equal civic society.

Yedid
Bread and Roses
$10,000 for one year

Bread and Roses works to protect Israeli women from workplace abuse by providing legal counseling, teaching women to advocate for their employment rights, and by lobbying for better national policy initiatives that ensure safe and humane workplace environments for women.

International Grants – outside of the US or Israel

American Joint Distribution Committee
Supporting Change for Elderly Women in Moldova
$50,000 a year for 4 years; this is the last year of funding

Improves the quality of life of some of the world’s poorest, most helpless elderly Jewish women living in Moldova, by providing vital humanitarian assistance including food, homecare, and medicines. This is a donor designated, special pass through grant.