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Afikim Centers are located in Jerusalem, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Shmona, Lod and Netanya. Afikim’s head office is located in Jerusalem.
Kiryat Shmona is Israel’s northernmost city, located near the border with Lebanon. Its location has made it an easy target for rocket attacks from hostile neighbors and its distance from Israel’s economic centers make earning a livelihood challenging for many residents.
We are proud that a stabilizing source of comfort for Kiryat Shmona families has been the presence and activities of the Afikim program, which has served to ease some of the strain on the local community by providing programming for children and families.
The vast majority of Afikim’s participants in Kiryat Malachi are children of Ethiopian immigrants. Their homes are in the heart of neighborhoods where drugs, burglaries, promiscuity, and serious crime permeate every street. Amid these challenges and the struggles of poverty, Afikim has worked hard to create a center that would become a warm, encouraging place where a healthy response to the youths’ needs could blossom and grow.
From providing nourishing meals to one-on-one teaching to sports and music activities, Kiryat Malachi’s Afikim center — the flagship of Afikim programs — has become the model for other Afikim centers across the country.
The Afikim Kiryat Malachi program was the first to add emotional therapy programming for its troubled youth as well as the first to provide an annual English speaking summer camp led by American students.
The Afikim Learning Center for junior high and high school in Lod, is located in the center of the country, just minutes from Tel Aviv, is located in neighborhood of Ganei Aviv, predominantly populated by residents of the Former Soviet Union.
Each youth here participates in emotional therapy workshops designed to serve as a therapeutic outlet, in addition to their academic programming. These therapies are known for their benefits in developing responsibility, confidence, leadership, and other interpersonal skills.
Afikim facilitates 10 centers in Jerusalem in the Gilo, Ramot, Lev Hair, Pisgat Zev and the Talpiot Industrial Zone neighborhoods.
The common denominator among all ten Afikim Jerusalem centers is the struggle that the families they serve have with economic, social and familial difficulties. The children often return home from school to empty refrigerators in sparse and lonely apartments, with hitting the streets a constant temptation.
The Afikim centers in Jerusalem have received tremendous encouragement and recognition from the municipality’s offices of education and welfare and Afikim is often singled out as a model for others to emulate.
In September 2020, Afikim opened its newest centers in the Shapira neighborhood at the Tamar Ariel school, where there are about 1,400 students, 250 of whom are members of the Ethiopian community and 300 are new olim from France. There has been a marked rise in high school delinquency amongst the new olim in this city, and Afikim strives to assist the teen olim not only with language acquisition but also with their integration into Israeli society. Afikim is offering a specialized program in communications for these teens.
Love, joy & happiness – these are the gifts the children receive at the Afikim center. Not to mention – attention, kindness, a comforting atmosphere, academic help and, of course, a warm meal.
