22 We are very impressed with TJI’s long-time Executive Director David Portowicz and his staff, and we are very comfortable supporting a wide array of TJI’s programs. Over the last four and a half years, we have made more than $200,000 in grants to purchase computers (including $30,000 where we met an expiring challenge grant and $25,000 for use in a course teaching work skills to unemployed single Moms), an industrial oven, playground equipment, an equine therapy program, furniture and equipment needed for an after-school program for disadvantaged teenage girls who are at risk of “dropping out,” help for Holocaust survivors as well as grants for a portable chair lift, and incremental therapy for their programs where the participants get a hot meal, academic assistance, and both one-on-one and group therapy. During the Gaza War, HOT gave TJI $46,500 towards recalling their teachers and other key personnel to reopen their dormitories to 230 Kids from Ashdod and other towns in the south. The kids had a balance of enrichment classes and camp like activities in the comparative safety of Tel Aviv. TJI’s very lengthy wish list includes: • $5,114 for kitchen renovations • $9,972 for outdoor play area for at risk children • $13,140 for tutoring 10 children in the summer between grade school and middle school @ $1,314 per child • $13,568 for 8 air conditioners @ $1,696 per air conditioner • $16,900 for 10 fully loaded computers @ $1,690 per computer Unfortunately, half of our $50,000 June 30, 2016 fiscal year grants to TJI had to be used to fortify and increase the height of the perimeter fence around their Bet Shemesh school. How wonderful it would have been to have made this grant for one or more of the items that have carried forward on TJI’s wish list, but the Palestinian terrorist who killed an innocent Israeli, a block away, in October of 2015, did not permit that. Look at the picture to the right… for sure it looks more like an Army base then a school. This is the reality Israelis have to deal with every day.