The Leiman Fund was established by Ricardo Leiman in 2019 to give young people from less privileged families the opportunity to attain a quality education and flourish into confident young adults. It has since grown its activities, and is laying the groundwork for a phase of further expansion.
Scholarship program
The Leiman Fund Youth Scholarship program offers scholarships to enable young people from deprived areas to secure a place at a Jewish high school, so than can benefit from both a strong Jewish and general studies education. We now grant more than 70 annual scholarships to boys and girls in seven schools in three countries:
Argentina – Buenos Aires
Belarus – Minsk and Mogilev
Ukraine – Zhytomyr, Odessa, Mykolaiv, and Vinitsiya.
Recipients of Leiman scholarships are committed to achieving academic excellence, as well as making a contribution to their society. We are proud that several of our beneficiaries in Ukraine have received achievement awards, despite suffering enormous hardship due to the ongoing conflict.
Assistance to our partner schools
The Leiman Fund has provided a range of other assistance to our partner schools, so they have the capacity to deliver the best quality of education to their students. Some examples include:
- Refurbishing a playground in Buenos Aires
- Installing air condition in Mykolaiv
- Installing a generator for a school in Zhytomyr
- Providing computers to children in Vinitsiya for remote learning
- Introducing computers to our school in Mogilev
- Funding social workers to provide psychosocial support for several schools in Ukraine
Summer and winter camps
The Leiman Fund has supported our partners to provide a variety of summer and winter camps in Ukraine and Belarus. These programs place strong emphasis on the emotional health of the children. More specifically, we have enabled:
Day camps – To ensure that children and youth have safe and wholesome activities during school breaks.
Overnight camps – In Ukraine, cities have been under bombardment, making it all the more important to enable children to get away to the countryside where they are temporarily free from the ongoing attacks.
Trips abroad – Programs to take vulnerable youngsters out of Ukraine to nearby countries – such as Hungary and Romania – to help them regenerate after experiencing the constant effects of war.
Gifts
Each year we sponsor the purchase and distribution of gifts – such as toys, games, and clothes – during the winter season for orphans and disadvantaged children.
So far, we have given gifts to thousands of children from Belarus and Ukraine, including children refugees from Ukraine.