Program Stories

Her tiny house is built of cinderblocks and contains just a few things: pots, pans, utensils, a small table for two, a bed. There are no modern devices like those found in today’s homes in Canada — no central heat, no dishwasher, no washing machine, no computer. The walls have no insulation, so old rugs hang from the walls in an attempt to block the cold.

Each year, as the brutal Ukrainian winter looms, the most vulnerable populations who IFCJ Canada—and YOU—serve in Ukraine become our focus.

Never having married or had children, 75-year-old Ruben misses the warm buzz and company of his early family years.

“When the war started, I was not yet four years old,” says 85-year-old Rachel from her home in Israel.

Maya has always been an early riser. In her younger years, she would wake up with the sun and get her housework done during those hours. She raised a family and made a home and then set off to her lifework in the theatre.

Her hands, now twisted with arthritis, still work diligently for several hours a day.

Rain or shine, through the bitter Eastern European cold and snow, for decades Issac walked through the streets to synagogue early each morning. His day never properly began without heartfelt fellowship with God in prayer, as well as heart-warming fellowship with friends in his congregation, many of them “old-timers” like himself.

Lydia hasn’t left her house in 10 years. She hasn’t seen the light of day in a decade.

Betya worries about her family who are left back in Ukraine, where the ongoing war threatens them each day.

86-years old, Bronya lives outside the Holy City of Jerusalem, in the Holy Land of Israel, her people’s historic and biblical homeland.

When IFCJ Canada volunteers arrived at Nina’s house recently—a tiny rural shack outside of Kyiv, Ukraine—they were struck by how this elderly Holocaust survivor and her humble home seemed to have changed little from the WWII-era days she remembered.

Sibo is an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor living in the Israeli city of Netanya. Despite at last living in Israel, her historic and biblical homeland, Sibo still found herself all alone and in need of help, after a lifetime of hardship, until IFCJ Canada stepped in to support her.