MAR 28, 2024 JLM 69°F 08:10 PM 02:10 PM EST
Car Broke Down? Not an Issue With These Friends Nearby

Getting stuck on the road led an Israeli man to create a nationwide volunteering organization, Yedidim, which won the President’s Award this year.

“One morning I got off work at 5 am and my car wouldn’t start. No one stopped to help me with the cables. It was winter and it was freezing cold. I had cables in my car, but I needed another car. I waited for an hour and a half for someone to stop and help,” Israel Almasi recalls.

That was in 2012. A few years earlier, there’d been a volunteer network, based on beepers, for just such emergencies. But it was no longer functioning.

Almasi’s experience led to the revival of Yedidim (Friends), because “I decided that there won’t be another person in the State of Israel who will get stuck the way I did.”

WithAlmasias CEO, Yedidim has recruited some 36,000 volunteers up and down the country, ready to aid in any non-medical emergency, big or small.

“Car cables are the most common emergency. We’re talking about 60 percent cables, another 20% flat tires, and the rest is locked cars, oil, water, and gas,” he notes.

“We extricate five to eight children from locked cars a day on average. In the past three years, we’ve rescued more than 5,000 kids.”

Last year, Almasi lit a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony on behalf of the volunteers, and this year Yedidim received the President’s Award for Volunteerism.

“It was a very exciting phone call. I was in the middle of showering the kids,” Almasi notes. “Getting this recognition, the President’s Award – it means so much to all the volunteers that the establishment acknowledges their work.”

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