MONTREAL — Yedidim might be little known outside of Israel, but Yvonne Margo hopes to change that.

Israel Aliyah Centre staffer Yvonne  Margo, back row, third from left, stands with a Sayeret group of young Ethiopian olim in Be’er Sheva in 2004.

Margo, a longtime staffer at the Israel Aliyah Centre here, said Montreal is in the preliminary stages of establishing a Canadian friends of Yedidim branch. Yedidim is an award-winning, non-profit organization in Israel that, among other things, provides peer mentorship programs for immigrant and marginalized children, youths and young adults in need of one-on-one support in the effort to deal with some of the social problems they face in the poorer areas where they live.

The peer mentors, all volunteers, are trained and supervised by Yedidim professionals to serve as essential role models and friends for those at risk.

Created in 1991, Yedidim, which means “friends,” has won several prizes, including the President’s Award for Excellence and Jerusalem’s Distinguished Service Award.

The Yedidim website states that 6,000 individuals in 46 Israeli communities currently benefit from Yedidim programs, with the help of 2,000 volunteers and 120 professionally trained co-ordinators.

“There are other programs in Israel for immigrant children at risk, but Yedidim allows them to stay at home with their families, which is very important,” Margo said. “They can live at home despite whatever problems [there are].”

Margo, who is 58, describes Yedidim as one of Israel’s “best-kept secrets,” known and greatly valued in Israel but in need of public awareness elsewhere.

Although there is an American Friends of Yedidim support group based in California and chaired by Jewish entertainer Mike Burstyn, there is nothing similar based in Canada or any other country.

“It’s a very grassroots organization,” Margo said. “When you go in there, you really get the pulse of what’s going on.”

Margo has been to Israel several times,  including last January, in connection with her own personal involvement in Yedidim, where her focus has been on helping immigrant Ethiopian teens complete their high school matriculation – bagrut, in Hebrew – as a step toward developing into well-adjusted and integrated members of Israeli society.

“Completing school means everything,” Margo said.

She has close and endearing ties to Montreal’s Ethiopian-Jewish community dating back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when she performed yeoman’s work in reuniting local Ethiopian young people with family members in Israel.

When Margo herself subsequently went to Israel, she was welcomed as a hero. In Montreal, her phone number continues to be the one the local Ethiopian community of 80 calls when they seek advice.

To this day, she said she has a very special place in her heart for Ethiopian Jews because of their dignified and refined manner.

It was that connection that prompted Margo, along with Ruth Saragosti, a former Montrealer who worked in the Jewish community and then at Yedidim in Israel, to co-design a tutorial program in 2004, called Sayeret, specifically geared to allow high-school-aged Ethiopian boys at risk of dropping out to use mentor tutors to complete their education.

Margo said that accomplishment remains key to young immigrant integration and responsible citizenship. Without it, she said, the road often leads to alcohol and drug abuse, crime and violence.

Sayeret began and continues in Be’er Sheva, which for years has been twinned with the Montreal Jewish community through Federation CJA. Initially, Sayeret received support from the federation’s Israel overseas program, Margo said, but Yedidim has since taken it over and the  program was subsequently expanded to include Sela, a similar program for Ethiopian girls at risk.

Margo has most recently been involved in seeing the tutorial program expand into Kiryat Gat, a development town about 60 kilometres south of Tel Aviv.

During Margo’s last trip to Israel in January, discussions focused on how to increase financial support and raise the group’s profile in other countries.

“We have to start to do something,” Margo said. Few realize, she added, that Yedidim projects can get underway for as little as $20,000 or $30,000, but “it can make a huge difference.”

The secret of the Yedidim program, one of its documents says, “lies in the peer-to-peer encounter model, which provides us with the unique ability to act as a safety net, essentially catching these youths before they reach the ‘point of no return.’

“At the present time, potential program participants far outnumber our ability to include them in our programs.”

Yedidim can be reached through its website, www.yedidim-israel.org, or locally by e-mailing Margo at [email protected].