Katef Le Katef

"Shoulder To Shoulder" is an organization founded with the aim of creating a meaningful change in Israeli society through helping distressed families break the cycle of poverty. An innovative program was developed with the aim of providing a genuine opportunity to consciously break the experience of life as ongoing crisis. We believe that every person has the ability of choice for living life, as our main goal is to reveal the opportunity and provide accompaniment in a process of change for taking responsibility over life. We believe in the ability of every person to advance and realize their abilities and aspirations without the dependency on welfare or grace. One of the organization's primary goals is to assist those families in reestablishing themselves as functioning members of society. The organization offers broad support to families from all facets of Israeli population within the bottom socioeconomic tier of society, who experience financial and social difficulties; absorption and integration problems and hardships in achieving their educational and medical needs. Many organizations provide such families with stopgap assistance, a kind of economic "first aid" that does not delve into the family's rooted problems. Our experience is that effective intervention requires comprehensive and intensive work at the root levels, through ongoing holistic accompaniment for a period of 12 months to 2 years. out comes after a year of work with the families: • Out of 257 people: At the beginning of the process only 110 people were part of the work force, at the end of the process 217 people joined the work force (84%) as a result of the training process. • 73.5% attend at their workplace persistently, 48% upgraded Employment. • From 171 households 83% increased their income from employment. the average amount of increase stands on 1,958 NIS • At the beginning of the process the total amount of debt without a recovery process was 12,404,522 NIS • at the end of the process: 1,112,165 NIS