Faces of The Fellowship: Avraham

 |  January 6, 2016

A family of four sitting on a bed together.

Avraham (far left), 12, lives with his siblings, parents, and grandmother in an old, dilapidated house in a small village in Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union. The parents work very hard, but struggle to give their children the food and shelter needed for a happy life.

Their house belongs to a distant relative who allows the family to live there for free, as they cannot afford to pay rent. While the family is grateful for a place to live, the house isn’t in the best condition. Their relative only allows them to use the house because he isn’t interested in living there himself. Without the proper insulation, the rooms are cold and wet.

While they wish for a new home in better condition, the parents are struggling to find well-paying jobs. Even though the mother works some days at a local market and some days painting cars, neither job pays well.

The children’s grandmother uses her pension to buy food for the children, and the local synagogue helps the family by providing food when it’s available. However, the small amount of food the grandmother can afford is not enough to feed a family of seven, especially one with four teenagers. And the food she is able to buy lacks the proper nutrition needed for growing kids, so the children are pale and malnourished.

Thankfully, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) stepped in to help the family and provides them with food, heating fuel, winter clothes, and medical help. IFCJ gives the family much-needed food packages to supplement the little their grandmother can provide. We also help the children keep warm in the winter through our winter relief program, which pays for heating fuel and warm clothes. When the children become sick, IFCJprovides them with medical assistance.

After so many months of not being able to afford enough food and living in a house without proper heating, the family is grateful for the life-changing support of IFCJ.

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