The Yael Foundation is an international philanthropic organization that supports Jewish education across multiple countries. Established in 2020 by co-founders Uri and Yael Poliavich and headquartered in Jerusalem, it directs grants to schools, kindergartens, after-school programs, and community organizations already active locally, adding teacher training, curriculum development, and operational resources.
Access to Jewish education is uneven. Established schools and resources concentrate in large urban centers, while smaller and more remote communities run on fewer qualified teachers, older facilities, and less predictable funding. The Yael Foundation funds community-led schools that can hold consistent academic and Jewish-studies standards, and connects them through a network that shares funding, teaching methods, and leadership training across 45 countries.
These figures illustrate the scale of the Yael Foundation’s educational initiatives and its international reach. Through long-term support for Jewish education, the Foundation continues to strengthen educational opportunities for thousands of children across multiple countries.
The Yael Foundation’s Mission and Educational Approach
The Yael Foundation’s mission is to widen access to high-quality Jewish and general education, and strengthen Jewish identity in communities worldwide. It states one conviction directly: every Jewish child should have access to strong Jewish and general education, whatever the location or size of the community.
The Foundation’s central goal is access. It funds schools, kindergartens, after-school programs, and community organizations already active in their communities, and supplies the resources they need to raise their Jewish and academic standards. The Yael Foundation does not run these schools and imposes no single model; it funds community-led efforts and leaves operations with the people who manage each school. Its aim is for those schools to become the “preferred choice for Jewish families,” not merely an available one.
Three values direct its funding decisions:
- Adaptive engagement: it funds programs of varied locations, sizes, cultures, and demographics, rather than applying one template.
- Relationship building: it keeps continuous contact with grantees and connects them into a community of leaders.
- Continuous improvement: grants are structured to help schools evolve over time.
The Foundation strengthens existing community work and does not take operational control of it.
The History of the Yael Foundation
The Yael Foundation was established in 2020. It was co-founded by Uri and Yael Poliavich, business leaders and philanthropists.
The Yael Foundation’s founding traces to a specific starting point: a first donation to a village kindergarten in Anatevka, Ukraine, expanded into other schools in Ukraine and Belarus, and as demand across Europe became clear, the Yael Foundation was formed under the motto “No Jewish Child Left Behind.”
Two goals were set at launch. The first was access: reaching children in communities where strong Jewish schooling was limited or absent. The second was the method. That founding model was grant-making: the Yael Foundation supplied funding, teacher training, and resources while local partners kept managing their schools. The model has since widened. Direct programs were added, including a summer program, an international summit, and an awards program.
Stages of development
The Yael Foundation launched in 2020 as a grant-making fund. The first phase established the Yael Foundation’s community partnerships and the model it still runs on: funding schools and the organizations behind them rather than operating schools directly.
Direct programs followed the grants. By 2023 the Yael Foundation was running Yael Camp, an international summer program that brought together children from across Europe and beyond. The annual Yael International Summit extended that international reach, gathering heads of school and community leaders from dozens of countries; its 2025 edition was held in Cyprus, and 2026 edition was held in Vienna.
Geographic reach widened across Europe, Latin America, and other regions, and the Yael Foundation began building structures to connect grantees rather than fund them in isolation. In April 2025 it launched the International Jewish School Leadership Exchange, linking principals and administrators across borders.
At its current stage, the Yael Foundation supports 145 institutions across 45 countries and 101 cities, with multi-year school-building projects under development.
The Yael Foundation’s Operating Model
The Yael Foundation is led by its co-founders, Uri and Yael Poliavich. Its day-to-day operation is run by an executive team: Chaya Yosovich as CEO and Naomi Kovitz as COO. The division of work is consistent with the foundation’s model. The Yael Foundation evaluates, funds, and connects the schools it backs; it does not run classrooms. That work sits with the local organizations receiving the grants.
The Yael Foundation operates through partnership. In each country, it funds organizations families already trust, adding resources and access to experienced educators while the local partner contributes knowledge of the community, its language, and its families. The Start-Up Classrooms initiative is the clearest example, aimed at making Jewish schools the first choice for families in a given community. At a wider level, the Yael Foundation has partnered with the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation to advance Jewish education across Europe.
How projects are selected
Institutions apply to the Yael Foundation through a structured grant-review process, and each application is evaluated against the educational impact it can produce over time. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, with a response within six months of submission. The Yael Foundation reviews only legally registered organizations with complete documentation, and applications must come from an authorized representative of the school. Eligibility covers Jewish schools, kindergartens, and informal Jewish educational programs serving ages 3 to 18.
Grants follow a 12-month plan, sized by enrollment, location, and cost of living. The Yael Foundation funds student recruitment, salaries for Jewish, Hebrew, and general-studies teaching staff, curriculum and classroom technology, and family incentives like scholarships, transportation, and longer school days.
The Yael Foundation’s Programs and Initiatives
The Yael Foundation runs programs spanning a school’s life cycle: building children’s identities, training school leaders, modernizing teaching, recognizing strong institutions, and constructing new schools.
Yael Schools
Yael Schools is the Yael Foundation’s school-development initiative: a planned network of International Baccalaureate (IB) World Schools in emerging Jewish communities. Where the Yael Foundation’s grant programs strengthen schools that already exist, Yael Schools is the foundation moving into building new institutions directly. The model pairs a full IB academic curriculum with Jewish studies, alongside arts and entrepreneurship programming, in communities where a school combining those elements did not previously exist.
The initiative is launching with two flagship schools, both in development. The Yael Foundation’s first campus is the Yael Private School of Limassol in Cyprus, scheduled to open in September 2027. A second campus is planned for Lisbon, Portugal. The Limassol school is planned for around 1,500 students at capacity, and is intended to serve the local Jewish community while setting an academic standard the Foundation can apply across other Yael Schools.
The model is standardized across the network: each Yael School operates as an IB World School, pairing the IB’s inquiry-based, internationally recognized curriculum with structured Jewish studies, and is designed as a reference model for other institutions in the Foundation’s network.
Yael Camp
Yael Camp is an international summer program for Jewish children and teenagers, run by the Yael Foundation and held in a different country each year. Participation is fully subsidized. The program is structured as two sessions of about 11 days each.
Yael Camp serves school-age children and teenagers from Jewish communities across Europe and beyond, including from communities where local Jewish programming is limited. For many participants, it is the first time they meet Jewish peers from outside their own country. The program runs in multiple languages to match its mixed intake.
The program combines social activity with structured Jewish learning. Campers study Jewish history and heritage, including site visits; the 2023 Warsaw edition took participants to the Jewish Museum of Warsaw and the city’s historic synagogue. At Yael Camp, the foundation sets no single template for Jewish engagement, treating identity as participant-defined rather than a fixed standard.
International networking
Yael Camp brings together children from Jewish communities around the world, creating opportunities for intercultural exchange and long-term connections. International participation is a core element of the program, allowing young people from diverse backgrounds to meet, learn together, and build lasting friendships. Through this approach, the Yael Foundation strengthens ties between Jewish communities and encourages continued collaboration beyond the camp itself.
The program has continued to grow over the years. In 2023, it brought together 170 children. By 2025, participation had increased to more than 500 children from 19 countries, with activities conducted in four languages. This steady growth reflects the expanding international reach of the initiative and its ability to engage Jewish communities across diverse regions.
Yael Camp’s measurable output is reach: a growing cohort of children from across the diaspora, many in a structured Jewish program for the first time, building peer connections across the participating countries.
Yael International Summit
The Yael International Summit is the Yael Foundation’s annual conference for Jewish educators and community leaders. It runs as a multi-day event, with the program built around advancing Jewish education and tackling the challenges schools share across countries. The Summit launched in 2023; the 2025 edition, held in Cyprus under the theme “Education and Beyond,” was its third annual gathering.
The Summit combines keynote sessions, working discussions, and practical workshops with structured time for participants to meet counterparts facing similar conditions. Programming centers on Jewish and general education standards, school leadership, innovation in teaching, and Jewish identity. The event also hosts the Yael Awards, which recognizes individuals and schools for contributions to Jewish education, innovation, and community support. Each edition convenes 200 educators from 40+ countries for three days, producing cross-border professional links between leaders running comparable institutions. It has also served as a launch platform for new programs, including a 2025 mentoring initiative pairing educational leaders from Europe and the United States.
Innovation in Education
Innovation in Education is the Yael Foundation’s leadership-development program, formally the International Program for Leadership and Innovation in Jewish Education. It trains principals and senior staff to introduce new teaching methods and management practices, across two tracks: formal education for principals and mid-level management, and informal education for youth-movement and community leaders. A pilot ran 18 principals from six countries through a year of training.
The Yael Foundation’s program delivers through four components: a leadership conference in Europe, an intensive seminar in Israel covering innovation, entrepreneurship, and educational leadership, one-on-one mentoring from specialists, and seed funding for selected projects on a review committee’s recommendation.
Across the program and its core grants, the Yael Foundation funds three categories of school improvement: new teaching methods, through principal training in updated instruction and management; educator development, through teaching salaries, leadership training, and mentoring to build and retain staff; and classroom technology and curriculum, through core grants covering curriculum development and teaching equipment.
Yael Awards
The Yael Awards are the recognition program of the Yael Foundation. It is an annual award, open to schools across 45 countries, presented as part of a three-day event of lectures and workshops focused on learning, sharing, and strategy, and closing with a ceremony for the schools and educators recognizing the strongest programs.
The award is presented at the Yael Foundation’s annual summit, which launched in 2023; the 2026 edition was the fourth. The Yael Foundation’s purpose for the awards is twofold: to recognize schools and educators producing measurable results, and to surface the methods behind those results so that other institutions in the network can adopt them. The awards event functions as the recognition end of the same work the Yael Foundation funds through its grants.
The Yael Award of Excellence is open to schools, educators, programs, and educational leaders. The 2026 edition ran across 12 categories, including Academic Excellence, Community Impact, Innovator of the Year, Teacher of the Year, Preschool of the Year, Youth Program of the Year, Jewish Experience of the Year, and a Pioneer Award. Candidates are submitted and then assessed by an international judging panel, with category honorees chosen from a shortlist of finalists.
For the network, the Yael Award of Excellence functions as a method-transfer mechanism: recognizing a school for academic results or classroom innovation documents a working practice other schools can adopt, and gives educators in smaller communities visibility they would not otherwise have. Within the foundation’s model, the award is the function that identifies and circulates proven practice across the network, complementing its grants and training programs.
Geographic Reach of the Yael Foundation
The Yael Foundation supports a network of 145 institutions across 45 countries and 101 cities, reaching 29,362 children. Its headquarters are in Jerusalem, Israel, and its stated geographic focus is diaspora Jewish communities in Europe, Latin America, and beyond. Funding is directed through a structured evaluation model, with grants weighted toward institutions that can sustain high standards over time. The Yael Foundation’s largest commitments concentrate in a few locations: Limassol, site of its first ground-up school; six capital-project cities (Riga, Faro, Malta, Copenhagen, Kyiv, Tbilisi) where it funds construction and renovation of community and educational buildings.
The Yael Foundation’s Impact on Jewish Education
The Yael Foundation maps its programs to four structural problems. Against the staffing shortage, it funds teacher salaries, training, and leadership development, and ran a pilot moving 18 principals from six countries through a year of management training. Against falling enrollment, it directs multi-year grants that stabilize per-pupil economics. Against uneven access, it funds schools in communities previously without strong Jewish education, now spanning 45 countries. Against assimilation, it combines academic standards with Jewish studies across 145 schools reaching 29,362 children.
The Foundation’s effect shows up in specific, documented work rather than in totals alone. In November 2025, the Yael Foundation entered into a strategic partnership to expand funding and educational support for Jewish communities across Europe. Its International Leadership Program moved 18 principals from six countries through a year of training in innovation and school management. Its April 2025 Leadership Exchange built standing professional links between school leaders in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. And its capital projects have funded the construction and renovation of community buildings and school facilities in cities including Riga, Faro, Copenhagen, Kyiv, and Tbilisi.
The Yael Foundation in Global Jewish Education
In five years, the Yael Foundation has built a grant-making operation that reaches Jewish schools and communities most national systems and larger philanthropies do not. The role it occupies is specific: it funds and strengthens schools that local communities already run, rather than operating them, and connects them into a network that shares funding, training, and method across borders.
The foundation’s record since 2020 is concrete: 145 institutions across 45 countries and 101 cities, reaching 29,362 children; a move from funding schools to building them through Yael Schools, with its first ground-up campus in Limassol opening in 2027 for 1,500 students; recurring international programs including the annual Summit, the Yael Award of Excellence, and the 2025 Leadership Exchange.
