According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people must satisfy their basic survival needs before they can progress to higher-level psychological needs and aspirations of self-fulfillment. But once those basic needs are met, the right support can help change the trajectory of a person’s future, according to Eli Cohen, CEO of the NGO Pitchon Lev.
For nearly a decade, Cohen has led Pitchon Lev through a transformation from an organization focused primarily on feeding the poor to one that aims to help Israelis break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and become productive members of society. To accomplish that, Pitchon Lev approaches poverty across three time frames: immediate, long-term and what Cohen calls the strategic term.
“The first step is to give necessities, such as food and shelter,” Cohen explained. “Because you can’t work on improving your English, for example, if you don’t know what you are going to eat for lunch.”
This is Pitchon Lev’s first step: making sure its clients know that they and their families are safe and have what they need to survive. This means not just delivering a food package. It means understanding each family’s weekly needs and helping meet them. That includes food, of course, but it could also mean cleaning products, glasses or a school bag for a child, or perhaps a visit to the hairdresser or dentist.
“We take the stress down in the living room, so to speak,” Cohen calls it. “Because think of a family that sits in the evening in their living room, and they need to send the kids to school in the morning, but the refrigerator is empty, and they don't know what they're going to send them to school with. That creates a lot of stress. But when they know that everything is covered, if the boy needs shoes, he'll get them. If the girl needs the school bag, she'll have it. Whatever they need is covered. Then the stress level is going down.”
Next, still in the immediate term, Pitchon Lev focuses on what it calls “rights fulfillment,” ensuring that families receive all the government benefits to which they are entitled. Studies show that people who are better off tend to utilize their rights more fully. In contrast, poorer people often access fewer welfare benefits, partly because they fear being labeled by the system or having their children taken away. Pitchon Lev helps families navigate the system while building trust between the organization and the family.
Once a family is more stable, it can move into the next phase, which focuses on 18 months of personal coaching, parenting support and occupational training.
“Whatever they need, we're going to do,” Cohen said, noting that after 18 months, Pitchon Lev helps place clients in suitable jobs. Many participants train in the organization’s IT program, for example.
Pitchon Lev then stays with them through the first few months of employment to help ensure they don't fall back into old patterns and can keep their jobs.
Cohen said that when Pitchon Lev introduced this new approach, the organization was told it would not succeed, that “you cannot take people out of poverty; it’s impossible.” But the program has proven otherwise. According to Cohen, one in three families the organization works with has broken the cycle of poverty.
Another long-term initiative is Program Seven, which works with young people from 10th grade through one year after their military service. The program helps participants complete their matriculation exams, enter the military and, after completing their service, either begin academic studies or find a suitable job.
“If we manage to do that, then we know that we break this cycle of poverty, and unlike their family, they won't come to our aid centers to get food,” Cohen explained. “We are managing to do that with 84% of the kids we're working with. So far, that is more than 3,000 kids we are working with all over Israel.”
Finally, there is what Cohen calls the strategic term. Pitchon Lev is not simply an umbrella fundraising organization. It works directly with families and understands their needs and pain points, knowledge it has used to push for change at the national level.
During the last Knesset, Pitchon Lev succeeded in passing legislation it had first drafted nearly 19 years earlier to establish a national agency to fight poverty. According to Cohen, it will mark the first time in Israel’s history that the different government offices responsible for addressing poverty will be connected through a coordinated national framework.
The organization operates across the country and has reached all 237 municipalities, as well as Bedouin villages and other communities without official municipal status. Its primary focus is Israel’s periphery, where people tend to be underserved. Pitchon Lev also partners with other NGOs rather than duplicating existing services.
“We’re working with every sector of Israeli society,” Cohen said. “We work with secular and ultra-Orthodox, with Arabs and Bedouin. We help everybody. It's part of what we do.”
Pitchon Lev does not have the funding to reach everyone who needs help, and there is inevitably a limit to how many people one organization can serve. But Cohen asked what could happen if the Israeli government adopted some of its programs on a much larger scale. If one in three families could break the cycle of poverty, or even one in five, the impact across Israeli society could be enormous.
“It would be unbelievably good,” Cohen said.
For the next generation, the potential impact may be even greater. According to Cohen, a child raised in poverty in Israel today has a 78% chance of remaining in poverty as an adult. Pitchon Lev says it has helped 84% of the young people in its program break that cycle.
Around 90% of the program’s participants complete their matriculation exams. Cohen said the difference is also visible in military service. Among impoverished youth in the broader population, only about 50% enlist, and around 60% of those who do enlist leave the military within six months. By comparison, according to Pitchon Lev, 94% of the young people in its program enlist, and 98% of those who enter the military complete their service.
The results are a boon not only for Israel’s security but also for the young people themselves, who leave the program with education, experience and a better chance of building a future outside poverty.
Pitchon Lev operates on annual revenue of about NIS 230 million, 98% of which comes from Israeli sources. Now, the organization is looking abroad.
But Pitchon Lev is not simply searching for international donors. Cohen said it is looking for partners who believe in its mission in Israel and may eventually want to bring elements of the Pitchon Lev model to their own communities, providing the leadership and training needed to help break cycles of poverty elsewhere.
“We are trying to partner with people that say, ‘I want to be a part of it too,’” Cohen concluded.
Written in collaboration with Pitchon Lev