TORONTO — Yachad, the National Jewish Council for Disabilities, is celebrating 30 years of advocating for Jewish children and adults with special needs and creating a place for them within the Jewish community.
“Our mission is inclusion of special needs into the mainstream society, and we feel they should be allowed access and encouraged to be included in anything that has to do with Jewish organizations of any kind,” said Devorah Marmer, the director of Yachad’s Toronto chapter.
Yachad, Hebrew for together, has 17 chapters in Canada, the United States and Israel that offer people with special needs opportunities to take part in events and programs.
“We provide educational and social recreational programs for children and adults with special needs… We have peers, high school students or university students who do programs together with special needs people,” Marmer said.
Some of the services include counselling for individuals and families, weekend retreats, vocational training and job placement, Shabbat programs, Birthright Israel trips for people with mobility or special learning needs, and summer camps for members of all ages.
“We have summer camp programs in the Moshava Ba’ir, [a Jewish summer day camp based in Toronto] and for the first time we’re doing a program in the Moshava Ennismore sleep-away camp,” Marmer said.
Eli Hagler, Yachad’s associate director based in New York, said its summer camp program teaches young adults that despite some physical or mental differences, everyone deserves to be included.
“Through our summer programs, more than 5,000 children and teens have had the opportunity to travel throughout North America and Israel. Our programs in association with 10 mainstream summer camps have taught children and teenagers that while someone may appear different from themselves, we are all the same,” he said.
As a non-profit that relies on donations to operate its programs, Yachad organizes a number of fundraisers, including marathons that take place annually in Miami, Toronto, New York and Jerusalem. To date more than 1,800 people have run the marathon, and raised more than $2.7 million.
On May 3, Yachad’s Toronto chapter will partner with GoodLife Fitness to organize a five-kilometre run to raise funds for the organization. Each runner is required to raise a minimum of $300.
Yachad is running a Purim-themed fundraising drive, offering custom gift baskets that are assembled by Yachad participants.
Marmer said despite Yachad’s 30-year history, there are still many in the Jewish community who don’t know it exists. “My goal is to educate people in society about [people with] special needs and Yachad,” she said.
“If they have a physical disability or a mental disability, whatever it is, our motto is… ‘because everyone belongs.’ [People with special needs] have a rightful place in society just like everybody else and it is our mission to include them and accept them just like we accept every other person.”
Marmer said many people think that working with people with special needs is a big mitzvah. “But the way we look at it, it’s not that you’re doing a kindness… we’re the ones who are learning so much and getting so much out of it. It’s not so much that we are giving of our time and doing chesed for somebody else. We are really getting a lot out of it,” she said.