American Jewish World Service

Since its founding in 1985, American Jewish World Service (AJWS) has been the gold standard in the Jewish community’s response to global poverty and a  eld leader for social justice. While AJWS has never strayed from its core mission of encouraging American Jews to help people achieve self-sufficiency around the globe, it has also managed to adapt itself and its programs, realizing that the methods and strategies of the 1980s and 1990s need to be tailored for the 21st century. Led by dynamic and renowned President Ruth Messinger, AJWS continues to ensure that global justice will be at the top of the American Jewish social conscience in the 21st century. 

In part, AJWS is an intermediary through which 70,000 American Jews support non-governmental organizations in Asia, Africa and the Americas. In addition to the long-standing service opportunities and advocacy work it directs, AJWS is now offering educational materials for the public through various publications, including a new wiki database (www.on1foot.org), which offers users the opportunity to search hundreds of Jewish texts to learn about the intersection of social justice and Judaism. 

AJWS has “touched a chord in contemporary American Jewish life.” Giving American Jews access to global organizations has extended the Jewish community’s reach, and the innovative use of “highly motivated volunteers who create and leverage value” has not only been helpful to the organizations served, but also to the thousands of Jews who proudly identify as Jewish because of their experiences on AJWS service trips. Many evaluators comment that they “wish we had 100 more AJWS-like organizations in the Jewish world, but only if we had 100 more Ruth Messingers to lead them.”