The veteran Paamonim association is well known among the charitable associations in Israel. Every year, Paamonim provides assistance to thousands of families in financial distress, enabling these families to embark on a new path, to a life free of debt.
As a new year begins, a family accompanied by paamonim describes the process they went through from their perspective.
Tomer Ravid – a Paamonim volunteer from Herzliya and Leah Ben-Zvi – his team leader who also works on a full volunteer basis, recently received this moving letter, which gives an idea of what the paamonim do well.
“I feel that the words are sinful to the magnitude of the miracle that happened to our family in the encounter with paamonim.
We were on our way to financial oblivion.In other words, like most middle-class families, we worked very hard and earned well, we thought that life was in our hands, that life should pamper us because we are really in the more foaming part of life… But we just thought so.
We are constantly being ‘pumped’ that we are the lucky part of the universe, that most people on Earth earn less than us, hungry, emaciated, homeless/clothes/foodless.So we lived with the thought that we were ‘on the kipak’ and that we could live well.
But our bank accounts reflected a different reality, so we started shrinking without understanding how that could be (because after all, we earn more than most people on Earth).
We really shrank (so we believed) and lived through a very difficult experience. We give up, we downsize, but it’s not enough.
Every month we increased our overdraft by another few thousand shekels.”
After another month and another in which they repeatedly increased their credit limit, the couple realized that they were facing a hole, into which they might fall in a moment, and from which the resurrection would be extremely difficult. At this stage, just before the economic crisis hit them hard, the couple decided to make changes in their lives, and in order to support the process, they turned to experts at paamonim.
“Very determined not to reach economic doom, we turned to you,” the father of the family says in his letter.
The family set out, accompanied by dedicated volunteer escort Tomer Ravid, and the road was not simple.
“The process was very difficult. You entered the capillaries of our home, our bank accounts, our priorities, our fundamental decisions for life, you entered and made a thorough and nuclear mapping – I R M. A thorough and not simple examination of all the threads that weave our lives.
You worked like a surgeon who knows that this work must be done, he must operate, he must remove the tumor! At the same time, he knows that for his patient this is a difficult time and that there is a way that he (and only he) must do, must choose to ‘fight the disease’. You worked with dedication and determination but with endless sensitivity. We know that you are in an extremely sensitive system, even explosive – there are people here, there are children here, there is a past here… But there is also a future here.
You have managed to contain extremely difficult situations. Like that night when I slammed Tomer, ‘I can’t conduct myself like this, I feel poor! Poor! Poor! I feel like I’m choking, you don’t understand what it is!’ And Tomer, a fearless professional, was not moved by me and simply contained me and with sensitive and ingenious art raised me step by step to the right path.
To say the least… It wasn’t easy. But it was the greatest gift our home could have received. Your work method is so good, you put my wife and me together, facing our problems together, workingon themtogether, solving themtogether. Carefully examining our home’s priorities made us find a way to talk to each other and not slam each other. Find a way to compromise, prioritize and choose. You forced us to connect again. To take these islands that have become our lives and stitch them together into a stable land that can withstand the forces of nature.”
The couple accompanied for many months and summarize the assistance they received:
“Today, after a process of difficult and wonderful months, I am writing this email from the house we moved to just two weeks ago. A home twice as big as the one we left, giving us and our children far more than we could have even hoped for by year.
I am writing this email and I know, if it were not for the process we went through with you, without that wonderful review of all our life systems and the rebuilding of significant parts of it, there is no way that the future ahead of us would be the one that lies ahead.
So with all my heart,
Truly with all my heart,
A big thank you both
And to this wonderful organization that does holiness!”
Paamonim is a voluntary organization that assists families and individuals in the field of economic management. The assistance is provided voluntarily by thousands of Paamonim experts in the field of family finance and includes: information and tools for self-employment, online answers to questions, a one-time consultation meeting and personal or group financial support lasting several months. In addition, the organization operates financial education programs throughout the country, including lectures, study plans and group workshops.
The organization is currently running a fundraising campaign.
Your donation will enable us to help more families, even in the new year.
