The American Joint Distribution Committee adopted yesterday a budget of $35,110,000 for 1977. The expenditures for 1976 were $35,262,500, an increase of $3,725,000 over 1975.
The 1977 budget “will cover most bases and meet fundamental Jewish needs overseas.” Donald M. Robinson, of Pittsburgh, chairman of the budget and finance committee, told the more than 200 Jewish communal leaders from the United States and Canada at the JDC spoked annual meeting at the New York Hilton Hotel “Our programs and services in Israel will be maintained and in some instances expanded. Unexpected expenditures will continue to be met.”
Robinson said $8 percent of the 1977 budget will go for welfare programs; 20 percent for the aged, sick and handicapped; and 25 percent for Jewish education and religious and cultural programs including subsidies to Jewish schools in Europe, the Moslem countries, Israel, ORT and the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
Jack D. Weiler, a New York realtor and builder, was elected to his third one-year term as president. Robinson, who is a private investor and director of Revco Drug Stores Inc., was elected vice-president and president-elect. He will assume the presidency Jan. 1, 1978.
Weiler called attention to the year-Iongstudy of the JDC by a team of consultants. He said a booklet on the study which was distributed to those present “summarizes the first formal, in depth study of the Joint Distribution Committee in its history. We have had other evaluations and reports over the years but we have never had this kind of exhaustive, year-long, area by area evaluation of our work carried out by top consultants and top lay and professional leaders.” (See details in Dec. 7 Bulletin.)
Judge Nochem S. Winnet of Philadelphia, chairman of the study committee and chairman also of the JDC National Council, paid tribute to the more than 8000 members of the Council which was discontinued as the major governing body of the JDC as a result of the study.
425,000 JEWS AIDED IN 1976
Ralph I. Goldman, JDC executive vice president, reported that in 1976 the JDC aided over 425,000 Jews in over 25 countries around the world. This included a broad range of health, welfare, educational and religious and cultural programs. About 31 percent of the budget, almost $11 million, was spent in Israel including JDC’s traditional program of aid to the yeshivot and other religious and cultural programs.
Of the expenditures, about two-thirds for Western Europe went for care and maintenance of transmigrants, Jews who came out of the Soviet Union and other East European countries and were en route to countries other than Israel. In Israel the JDC integrated its last five directly operated institutions, four old age homes and geriatric hospital with Israel’s national network of facilities for the aged by turning them over to local authorities. The JDC will continue to provide operating funds for the five facilities for the next few years, Goldman said.
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