The shekel-dollar exchange rate continues its downward trend, falling to NIS 3.36/$.
(as of 4:30 pm IST, Wednesday)

At the recent JAFI Board of Governor’s Meeting we heard about the significant effect the falling dollar was having on this year’s budget.

On CNN yesterday, an in-depth report on American citizens working in Europe paid with dollar salaries and how the falling value effects their everyday purchases at the market.

Now, today in Haaretz, an article on how this historic low is challenging the local NGO community.

“Hundreds of local social charities and nonprofit groups that depend on funding from abroad fear that the continuing decline of the dollar exchange rate, combined with the growing U.S. economic crisis, will force them to dismiss employees and curtail the services they provide in the fields of education, welfare and health. The dollar’s fall has cost some of these organization’s a 20 percent decline in income.

“There hasn’t been a crisis like this since the expansion of civil society in recent years,” says Prof. Benjamin Gidron, the director of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva.”

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