Mark and Jane Wilf have made a $1 million donation through the Wilf Family Foundations toward the construction of Magen David Adom’s new state-of-the-art Marcus National Blood Services Center. The Wilf Family Foundations’ donation will support the development of the Wilf Education Center in the blood center, located on a five-and-a-half-acre campus in Ramla, near Israel’s Bren Gurion airport.

The Wilf Education Center will provide training opportunities for MDA first responders, EMTs, and paramedics, as well as lab technicians and phlebotomists, to learn the latest insights in lifesaving techniques. The Wilf Education Center will also house a large auditorium that can host conferences, seminars, film screenings, and other professional development activities.

Since 1964, the Wilf Family Foundations have provided more than $300 million in support to charitable organizations, both in the United States and abroad. The Wilf Family Foundations devote a substantial portion of their annual funding to the support of organizations themselves devoted to a broad range of Jewish philanthropy. This includes providing assistance to organizations committed to Holocaust remembrance and education, to Jewish educational and religious organizations, and to Jewish organizations that in the tradition of Tikkun Olam provide assistance to all individuals in the communities they serve regardless of their religion, race or ethnicity.

MDA’s blood center will set a new global standard of preparedness. When completed at the end of 2020, the facility will make Israel the only nation in the world with an underground blood bank, safe from missiles and from chemical and biological attack. The blood center will additionally house MDA’s logistics hub, blood-donation rooms, a plasma storage and dispatch department, and conference facilities. And with a processing capacity more than twice the current blood center’s, the Marcus National Blood Services Center will serve Israel’s growing population, now more than 9 million people and expected to reach nearly 12 million by 2039.

The $130 million campaign to build the blood center benefits from a lead gift from the Marcus Foundation, the philanthropy of Bernie and Billie Marcus of Atlanta. Other noted donations include generous gifts from the Helmsley Charitable Trust of New York and the Adelson Family Foundation of Nevada.