Building Trust Before a Teen Becomes a File

When Shimon Siani, CEO of Yedidim, speaks of the work he does, he does not begin with a program name. He begins with a pattern he has seen repeatedly over more than three decades: children and teenagers in distress often need help long before formal systems know how to reach them.

Yedidim, formally Yedidim for Youth and Society, is a national Israeli nonprofit founded in 1991 that works with children and youth in situations of distress and risk. Public information from the organization describes its work across 120 communities, reaching thousands of children  and teenagers each year, through programs focused on mentoring, life skills, employability, prevention of risk behaviors, and social integration.

In the conversation, Siani traced Yedidim’s origin to the large immigration wave from the former Soviet Union. Israel, he explained, was absorbing families through “direct absorption,” often into development towns and neighborhoods already carrying layers of social and economic hardship. The practical challenge was clear: parents were struggling to adjust, systems were overloaded, and children needed support quickly. “We understood that the children needed to be absorbed faster than the parents,” he said. The original model matched an Israeli boy or girl with a newly arrived immigrant peer for a year. But Siani was careful to describe it not as assimilation, but as a relationship of mutual learning: “not that I, the Israeli, decide and say come be like me,” but rather, as he put it, “you learn the language from me, and I can learn culture and values from you.”

That idea still shapes the work today. Its core asset is not a building, a curriculum, or a public campaign. It is the ability to build trusted relationships with children and their families in the places where they actually live. Siani described Yedidim’s expertise simply: “children and youth.” Its tools include personal mentoring, group work, community-based accompaniment, and long-term processes. The organization does operate two after-school centers, he noted, but he emphasized that Yedidim’s strategic choice is to “invest money in people and not in buildings.”

Over time, Yedidim expanded from immigrant youth to other groups of children and teenagers at risk, including youth involved with the justice system. Siani described one major area of work is the prevention of repeat offending among teenagers who have broken the law. Here too, the method begins with proximity. “All the systems bring him to them,” he said, describing the standard institutional approach. “We come.” Yedidim enters the home, the neighborhood, and the child’s natural environment, trying first to understand what is happening and then to build trust.

This trust-based model is also central to Yedidim’s work in Haredi and Arab communities. Siani said the organization is “very strong today” in both, precisely because it does not enter with external slogans or a desire to be seen. He gave the example of work with women and girls, explaining that if he entered with “a flag of feminism,” some communities would reject the intervention outright. Instead, Yedidim works from within the community, with local legitimacy and patience. “I prefer to build trust,” he said. In a field often driven by visibility, Yedidim’s instinct is almost the opposite: do the work quietly enough that communities allow it to continue.

The Yedidim Institute for Leadership, Management, and Volunteerism’, established by Siani together with Prof. Hillel Schmid nearly three decades ago, provides field coordinators and mentors with high-level professional training, develops training materials, and is also engaged in the measurement and evaluation of the programs.

“In order to operate nationwide programs on a large scale, intuition is not enough. It is also necessary to build a professional framework of the highest standard - one that develops the methodology for mentoring and training, and trains the female and male coordinators and mentors across the country. The Institute’s guiding principle is ‘professionalism in volunteering and social action.’”

That same instinct underpins one of Yedidim’s newest initiatives: support for children and families of reservists living with post-trauma. In the meeting, Siani described the story that pushed him to action. A staff member told him about a relative who returned from military service in significant psychological distress. After spending time in a stabilization setting, he did not return to live at home, leaving the family with deep concern and practical questions: how to cope with the situation, who was supporting the children, and where to turn when there was no clear address for help?

The program launched in September 2025 and is already operational. The organization did not want to wait for the full machinery of government before beginning. The bureaucracy was heavy, and the need was already present. Yedidim wanted time to build the model, training, and operations while continuing to move toward formal public recognition.

As part of the initial pilot phase, the program currently serves 82 mentees from 56 families, with 61 mentors active in 67 communities across Israel. Each child is matched with a dedicated mentor who meets them for two to four hours a week in the home and natural environment, offering emotional support, academic assistance, and social guidance. Mentors are trained and supervised by psychologists and social workers with expertise in post-traumatic stress. The model also includes ongoing parental involvement and, where needed, financial assistance through a partnership with the Ilanei Chesed Foundation. The program is guided by an academic steering committee chaired by Prof. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, a clinical psychologist and professor at Bar-Ilan University. 

This is not presented as a replacement for therapy. In fact, its distinctiveness lies in occupying the space between clinical care, family life, and the broader rehabilitation system. Children of reservists affected by post-trauma may not always be the official patient, but they live inside the consequences. They may need a stable adult presence, help with school, support in social functioning, and someone who can notice when the family needs more. Yedidim’s model is designed around exactly that kind of close, relational support.

In February 2026, Yedidim did receive formal recognition from the Ministry of Defense’s Rehabilitation Department as an official implementing partner, enabling reimbursement of approximately 60 percent of operational costs and positioning the program inside Israel’s national rehabilitation ecosystem. The scale-up plan is ambitious but concrete: 255 children in the first year, 400 children in years two and three, and a long-term goal of reaching 1,000 children by 2029. Achieving this goal will require continued philanthropic support.

What Yedidim hopes to bring to the broader field is not only another service, but a way of working: early, relational, community-based, and close to the child’s real life. This work could reduce pressure on health plans, welfare services, and other overloaded systems because it reaches families at home and can identify needs earlier.

A core component of the initiative will be conducting in-depth research and developing innovative methodologies that will generate substantial new knowledge for the field, enabling meaningful learning about the phenomenon and effective ways to address it. It will also position Israel as a global leader in supporting families, particularly children, whose fathers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whether resulting from war, a natural disaster, or any other exceptional traumatic experience. 

The need Yedidim is naming is specific, but it points to a wider question for Israel’s trauma response. A soldier or reservist may be the person formally recognized by the rehabilitation system. But trauma rarely stops at the edge of an individual file. It enters homes, routines, marriages, school performance, friendships, and children’s sense of safety. Yedidim’s work begins there: not with a headline, but with a child, a mentor, and the slow work of trust.

“We see it as a moral and ethical responsibility to extend a helping hand to the families of reserve soldiers and provide them with meaningful support.”