The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) today announced the launching of The Fellowship’s “Food and Medicine Lifeline,” a milestone $52 million Fellowship commitment to ensure that impoverished elderly Jews, including Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union (FSU), receive the critical food and medicine they need to survive. The four-year, $13 million-per-year partnership significantly expands the two-decade partnership between The Fellowship and JDC.

The newly established IFCJ Food and Medicine Lifeline ensures that life-saving assistance, provided through JDC’s local network of humanitarian services across the FSU, is delivered to tens of thousands of vulnerable Jewish elderly facing overwhelming challenges and providing a sense of community to many who have no one to turn to in their time of need.

According to The Fellowship’s most recently available 990, just over $128 million was raised [in 2014], mostly from Christians, to “assist Israel and the Jewish people.” Since its founding, The Fellowship has raised more than $1.3 billion for this work.