Alma provides help for girls and young women involved in prostitution. The program provides three levels of service: an apartment where the girls can rest, cook and eat a hot meal and find someone who will listen to them; regular meetings between the young women and an ELEM volunteer; and streetwork teams that actively seek out the girls where they hang out.
While 100% of the participants in Alma experience sexual violence, abuse or exploitation, 58% have estranged family relationships and 55% experience emotional distress leading to depression, anxiety, eating disorders or suicidal thoughts. Almost half of those who are eligible for employment cannot get or keep jobs.
Alma has been operating in central Israel since 2013. Click here for the full map of our programs.
Alma’s target population is young women aged 13-26 from across the spectrum of sexual risk, beginning with non-age appropriate promiscuous sexual activity, sexual relations in return for money, to the extreme cases of commercial sexual exploitation.
Many young women in the project do not have a place to call home. Some have run away from lock-up institutions and are constantly on the move between the streets and other peoples’ homes, which puts them at significant risk.
Operating hours of the center have been expanded.
A new group is identifying girls in need in the Fadja area and in park Avnat.
Increase the number of program participants.
Create a social activities program together in cooperation with the program participants.
Hire a therapeutic coordinator and a volunteer coordinator.
