AYR PRACTICE AREAS Pro Bono
AYR – Amar Reiter Jeanne Shochatovitch & Co.’s guiding values oblige us to engage with our surrounding community, and we appreciate the importance of social involvement and of contributing our legal activities to the community.
As part of our firm’s community engagement, we make sure to provide equal opportunity when recruiting, employing and promoting our staff, absorbing graduates from a wide range of higher education institutions that excel personally and professionally.
We believe that, as lawyers contributing our time and skills to promote social rights, we have the actual ability to lead significant social change. We therefore encourage the legal team to take part in voluntary social activities, and to make our professional skills accessible for the benefit of diverse populations.
In addition, our team provides counselling services to non-profit organizations throughout the Israeli society, voluntarily. With multiple areas of expertise, our firm is able to provide numerous experts in their fields, that provide legal advice on a wide range of topics, including litigation and dispute resolution, corporate and contracts law, real estate and rentals, privacy protection, labour laws, intellectual property, etc.
Not only do our activities contribute to the community, but through our activities the firm benefits even more. Our lawyers are exposed to a broad range of diverse communities and to the dimensional depths of empowering weaker echelons, improving us as jurists, as members of society and as people, as well as empowering our firm in general by these beneficial activities.
The Duke of Edinburgh International Award – the program was established in Britain in 1956 by the late Duke of Edinburgh, designed to award youth and young adults with personal and practical tools for enhanced growth and maturity, irrespective of origin, religion or background. The program is currently active in 144 countries worldwide with the participation of around 8 million young people. The non-profit society’s activities in Israel are attended by thousands of young people aged 14 – 24, from all demographics, Jews and Arabs, secular and religious, new immigrants, and so on, all on an equal footing.
As part of these activities, which are focused on areas outside the centre of the country, the young people gain experiences, face challenges and reinforce their self-confidence, so that entering adulthood will be based on belief in their abilities and skills to better themselves and their surroundings.
The understanding that social gaps are the basis for many of society’s ills spurred Adv. Amir Amar, head of our firm and co-chairman of the non-profit organization, to launch a new program known as “Breaking the Glass Ceiling”.
The new programme includes a breakthrough personal experiential journey, in which the participants, pupils and instructors, receive tools to break ‘the glass ceiling’ on the road to success, among others, through “Golden Encounters”. These are monthly encounters with public opinion leaders, celebrities, jurists, artists and performers, academics, athletes and businesspersons, who are leaders in their fields, and who mentor workshops, give lectures and contribute of their time in any other way, in order to encourage, motivate and pave the way to success for these young people through their own personal stories. To the organization site>
Lemaanchem (For You) – Doing Wonders, headed by medical Consultant Yossi Erblich –provides medical advice to patients and their families free of charge. In addition to the medical advice, over recent years For You – Doing Wonders has compiled a database of medical consultants from among the most prominent doctors in the country, who are well acquainted with the medical system in Israel. The objective of these consultants is to assist patients applying to the organization, who are contending with a wide range of medical issues, at all stages of their diseases. The organization consultants provide solutions for these patients who cannot afford to pay for medical advice, patients of all ages, from all over Israel, irrespective of religion, race and gender, who are seeking assistance and run into problem after problem. The consultants guide them and their families on methods of treatment, present the existing available and most innovative therapies and refer them to the relevant specialists. In the rapidly changing world of medicine, Lemaanchem-Doing Wonders, does all it can to remain ‘up to date’, conducting regular tours of leading hospitals in the country and worldwide and learn of the changes in health systems.
Pitchon Lev – the Pitchon Lev organization is a non-political non-profit organization, founded in 1998 and operating to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty in Israel. The organization assists over 160,000 persons annually, irrespective of gender, religion, race, origin or nationality, through humanitarian assistance to needy families – food baskets, legal and medical assistance, etc.; social assistance and the operating of Centers for the Exercise of Rights; and the Pitchon Lev educational project ‘Touching the Horizon’, which provides youth with the necessary tools to mature as adults secure in themselves and productive in society, by developing their natural inner resources; the “Pitchon Lev Law for Combating Poverty” that lobbies the Government to establish a special authority to treat and eradicate the problem of poverty in Israel.
Lehetiv – Increase World Kindness – the Lehetiv non-profit organization was established in 2014 to assist and enable families contending with financial and employment difficulties, to embark on a life of mental, physical and financial wellbeing by directly working with the families and enlisting the caregiving authorities, to provide an array of solutions to improve their situations.
Yad Sara – Yad Sara is a member of the UN Economical-Social Council, and winner of the Israel Prize for its special contribution to society and the country. The organization was founded in 1975 as a local initiative by Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky, and within a short time, under his leadership, became the largest voluntary organization in Israel, providing annual assistance to some 720,000 Israelis. Yad Sara is operated by 7,000 volunteers in 24 fields of assistance deployed in 118 branches countrywide, fulfilling the organization’s vision around the clock, existing through donations. Yad Sara loans medical and rehabilitative equipment, enabling everyone to receive the best medical equipment needed, without the assistance of the public health services. A crisis center provides close medical assistance and constant supervision so that older persons and patients can remain at home. The home hospital department can replace agonizing hospitalization and rehabilitation in medical institutions, with the warmth of the home, without compromising on quality. The multiple health, community, medical and para-medical services provided devotedly and lovingly by the Yad Sara volunteers allow patients to recover and resume normal lives.
The LGTB Society in Israel – a pioneer among the gay community organizations in Israel, it is a national organization leading the gay community’s public battle for rights, accompanies local gay communities all over the country and provides solutions to all requirements.
Ezer Mizion – winner of the Israel Prize for 2007, and is the largest non-profit organization in the field of medical support.
The Ezer Mizion non-profit organisation provides medical assistance and support to the sick, the disabled and the elderly in Israel. Its services are provided through 15 departments with over 30 thousand volunteers at 58 activity centers in 31 cities throughout the country. Over 720,000 people, of all backgrounds, sectors and ages are assisted by its services annually. In 1998, Ezer Mizion established a national database of bone-marrow donors, to assist cancer patients and others suffering from severe diseases to find a suitable donor, and to thereby save lives. Since 2005, IDF soldiers have been able to join the database as part of their enlistment process. Since its establishment the database has collected over 1,100,000 potential donors, and over 4,300 life-saving bone-marrow transplants have been performed through this database to date.
Since its establishment in 1979, Ezer Mizion has been extending medical assistance and support to patients and their families, to the elderly, to the needy and to persons in many and various types of crisis, with the objective of assisting them to overcome the difficulties and obstacles facing them.
Bayit Balev – A Home for Persons with Special Needs (R.N.P) 80652006 – the objective of the organization is the establishment of a home for adults over age 21 who have been diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, which combines all activities and requirements whilst adapting the learning, employment, social life and medical needs for each of the residents.