Poverty in Israel -a million meals given by Eshel

Let me take you on a trip that few tourists see and most Israelis don't admit to, or in many cases don't even know about.

I refer to the 1.7 million Israelis who live in poverty.

In Israel today, 850,000 children go to school or Gan (pre-school) without breakfast and without the prospect of a proper meal all day. Eshel, the single biggest humanitarian aid agency in Israel helps to alleviate this terrible plight by providing over 1 million meals every year for the poorest individuals in Israeli society - the elderly, the infirmed, holocaust survivors, and the unemployed.

The work does not stop there. Working in conjunction with social workers in 63 municipalities, we feed 27,000 families before Passover and the New Year in a joint venture with the cross-faith organisation Keren Yedidut. Over 120,000 individuals (the majority of whom are children) receive 3 crates of food and household goods to help make this a holiday for the have nots.

Last summer, Bishop Doye Agama, director of the Apostolic Pastoral Association, led a select group from the UK to see Eshel's operations firsthand. The group served food in the Ramle Food Hall where truly impoverished people came out of their tenement flats into the hot, midday sun, rushing towards a converted bomb shelter to re