AKIM Programs
Support for Families
AKIM provides an array of services to help families maintain normal lives while ensuring a high quality of life within the community for children with IDD.
P2P: Parents to Parents Support Hotline
AKIM’s Parents to Parents Support Hotline, P2P, serves as an emotional lifeline and comprehensive resource for advice and support for parents – by parents. Since 2002, P2P has ensured that help is never more than a call away.
This free resource is operated by trained parent volunteers with support from qualified AKIM professionals. Volunteers are empowered, giving voice and purpose to their personal experiences and compassionate understanding of the complex challenges involved in raising a child with an intellectual disability.
Operating with an equal number of Jewish and Arab volunteers, this distinctive service strengthens the bonds of IDD families and the greater community by providing convenient and safe assistance in both Hebrew and Arabic. AKIM professionals provide expert oversight during hotline hours, ensuring all calls are properly fielded and escalated. Volunteers benefit from ongoing training including enriching workshops that strengthen social skills and recharge emotional stamina.
P2P has grown into a safety net, capturing unanswered questions and highlighting recurring issues facing Israelis with intellectual disabilities. The hotline operates as an ear-to-the-ground, and serves as a driving force behind several AKIM campaigns launched to alter or amend existing legislation in an effort to improve various aspects of life.
AKIM Aid Fund
The AKIM Aid Fund was established to ensure that every family has the ability to provide for their child’s needs with dignity and respect. The Fund distributes targeted financial assistance for essential and urgent needs to families facing the complex and costly challenges of raising a child with an intellectual disability.
AKIM’s goal is to reach every family in need. Donations to the Fund provide for: dental care, paramedical treatments, accessible housing, medical equipment, personal care and more.
Foundations, benefactors and donors like you make it possible for AKIM to provide families peace of mind and improved quality of life. One person can’t change the world, but with AKIM you can change the world for one person.
Camp AKIM
Summer fun for everyone
Each summer, AKIM provides summer camps offering a unique day camp experience for children with intellectual disabilities. Children and teens ranging in age from 5 to 21 participate in exciting and educational programming during the month of August. Our camps operate in calming surroundings away from city life and regular daily surroundings.
Children from Eilat in the South, all the way to Afula in the North, enjoy fun and enriching activities, including swimming, sports, music and art workshops. While the camps offer a wide range of activities for the children, they also allow families to take a break from their often intense daily routines.
Support AKIM and give a child the summer of their dreams.
AKIM Cares: Aftercare School Day Extension Program
All working parents understand the challenges of balancing professional and family life, but for parents of children with intellectual disabilities finding solutions to meet their special needs can be especially daunting. With the Israeli Special Education school day concluding by 2:00 pm, many working parents are left scrambling to find suitable and safe arrangements for their children.
AKIM Israel recognizes these needs providing support through AKIM Cares Aftercare Programs, extending the special education school day of more than 250 children. Our daily aftercare programs offer enriching activities in a safe and scholastic environment providing everything from artistic and sports activities to paramedical treatments. In addition to daily school aftercare activities, AKIM provides support during school holidays including summer camp programs, providing children with fun activities and assisting families year round.
AKIM Cares is a loving, caring and safe environment, offering parents the reassurance necessary to focus on and maintain their employment without additional stress. AKIM Cares for the needs of all family members.
Our Programs & Services
Through our programs and services, and a person-centered approach, we directly enrich, influence, and enhance the lives of Israelis with intellectual disabilities and their families in communities across Israel.
Through the department of Advocacy for Inclusion within the community, AKIM provides support and assistance in all aspects of life for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
Support for Families
Going to work and feeling part of a significant daily activity is an important element of every person’s life; even more so, when the person has an intellectual disability.
Employment & Career
As part of AKIM’s vision of inclusion, it established a unique collaboration with one of the greatest tools for integration and solidarity in Israeli society, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
Equal in Uniform: IDF Services
AKIM sees creative expression and culture as keys to a healthy lifestyle and important elements of leading a meaningful life.
Culture & Leisure
Our Voice – Driven by the concept of nothing about us, without us, AKIM’s aim is to give a powerful voice to the individuals that need it most. Participants learn about their rights and gain the skills necessary to express their needs and raise awareness in the community.
Dental Program
AKIM firmly believes that every person has a basic right to live within the community, in a housing structure that suits his/her various and changing needs over the years.
