Israel Program Support
What we are supporting
The first Israel program that the Israel for Youth Foundation has chosen to support is UJEB's Year 10 "Ketsev" Israel experience run by Victoria's United Jewish Education Board. It is aimed at Year 10 students who are not part of the Jewish day school system and who have at least one Jewish parent. In 2025, it is being offered to Year 10 and Year 11 students.
The program provides students with an educational and experiential review of Israel and 4,000 years of Jewish history. The program gives students an opportunity to discover and explore their identity and sense of Jewish peoplehood. The result is an integrated educational and pluralistic experience that allows students to challenge themselves to forge their own link within the chain of Jewish continuity.
As part of a well-managed program, UJEB also provides critical educational opportunities prior to the program and after the participants return.
Click here to access more information about UJEB's Israel experience. The program typically takes place December - January.
Who UJEB's "Ketsev" Israel experience is for
UJEB's "Ketsev" Israel experience is aimed at Year 10 students who are not part of the Jewish day school system and who have at least one Jewish parent. It does not matter if students have been to Israel previously. Students can be based in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Students who are based in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory or Queensland must contact our friends at Youth 2 Israel for further information.
In 2025, UJEB will offer their bespoke educational journey to Israel, KETSEV, to Year 10 and 11 students from non-Jewish day schools from VIC, WA, SA, NT and TAS.
Due to the circumstances in Israel, the intakes for 2023 & 2024 Israel program were cancelled. For those students completing Year 12 in 2025, who missed out on their Year 10 intake in 2023, you are eligible to apply for Yalla Israel, which departs in December 2025. Please ensure you register your details to hear more.
Hear from former participants
Please have a listen to the stories of some of our former participants and the impact it has had on their lives.
Katerina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9kDIGom4yk
Financial support
Our charity makes Israel programs more affordable, allowing more students to participate, and therefore enabling a greater impact on Jewish continuity in our community. Our charitable support is offered in several ways - the discretionary grant and extra financial assistance.
The support being offered is charity and is being made available to families who struggle to meet the full cost of Ketsev. It is not a subsidy automatically applied to all applicants and because there is a limited pool of funds, we will ask a number of questions about each applicant to understand their needs.
The Israel for Youth Foundation's funding comes from monies raised from a group of donors who understand the challenges being faced by many families across the many communities we support.
What charitable support does the Israel for Youth Foundation offer?
The discretionary grant
While our charity's grant is discretionary, key eligibility criteria to be considered includes:
- at least one Jewish parent
- be in Year 10 or Year 11
- attend a non-Jewish school in VIC, SA, TAS, NT or WA.
The grant is valued at up to $5,000 and is given once the student is accepted onto the program requiring the family to pay the balance of the program cost. The support from our charity is subject to participants successfully completing the program .
Families have the choice of accessing the full, part of or none of the grant. The grant is discretionary which means that the Israel for Youth Foundation Board must approve each application. It is designed to support families who cannot afford the full cost of the program.
To be considered for the discretionary grant, you will need to provide basic financial information so that we can best assess funding requests and allocations. It is not an entitlement and so we ask families to be honest about their financial position. Families who have elected not to take the grant, have helped support other families who genuinely needed financial assistance.
Both Israel for Youth Foundation and UJEB require students to participate in both pre and post trip programs.
Extra financial assistance
Families who struggle to cover the balance of costs of UJEB's Ketsev program, after the grant is applied, can apply for further means-tested financial assistance from our charity. Please contact us for further information.
Interested in becoming a Foundation Supporter?
If you are looking for a meaningful, tax deductible, charity that ticks the boxes for local community, education and Israel and you love the idea of sending young Australian Jews to Israel who might have otherwise missed out, then we would love to have a chat to you. Please click here to reach out to us.
