Our People was created by Leah Aharoni and Rabbi Pinchos Shwalb in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the need to rescue Jews from both Ukraine and Russia.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, our team has assisted over 1,500 Ukrainian and Russian Jewish families via our consulting line, absorption coordinators, airline ticket grants, food assistance, legal clinic, and educational programs.

As part of our Jewish identity program, Our People has been running annual overnight summer camps attened by 300-500 immigrant kids every summer, community day camps, and supplimentary ulpan programs. Our community center hosts a conversion program, shabbat meals, and full program of adult education.

Our People also runs an annual non-profit accelerator, guiding 15 Russian-Israeli nonprofits each year to improve and scale their activity. At the same time our Latte meetups support new immigrant activists inlaunching new social initiatives.

Since October 7, Our People has put its extensive experience working with refugees of war to help in the war effort. We have provided army units with thousands of pieces of tactical and medical equipment and tens of thousands of protions of hot food. Our cooperation with hospital rehab wards ensured that wounded soldiers received the equipment they need to get better. For evacuated families we have installed washers/dryers throughout evacuee hotels, delivered 7,000+ food packages and 1,500+ grocery gift cards, and established the Shalom Bayit Café. We have also distributed 2,500+ gift sets to wives of soldiers and sponsored .

Children are our priority so we distributed thousands of toys and board games, ran online workshops during periods of school closures, and ensured that hundreds of bar/bat mitzva kids got the party they deserved, despite the war, as part of our group bar/bat mitzva group.

Our story