But in order for our work to be effective, we need community members themselves to rally for their sons’ future.

To that end, Yaffed is working on an ad campaign to inspire parents to speak up and demand a better future for their children.

After the success of our Prospect Expressway billboard in 2012, and our most recent billboard in Williamsburg, we now intend to put up additional billboards and other ads promoting the Jewish value of general education in other Hasidic neighborhoods, including Boro Park, Crown Heights, and Monsey.

With your help, we will be able to put up our next billboard in Boro Park in early March.

Additionally, Jews have historically valued self sufficiency, and in today’s economy it is very difficult for an individual to be financially secure and self sufficient without a proper education.

In fact, right here in New York many Hasidic Jews are incapable of speaking the English language fluently, and many are forced to rely on government assistance due to an inability to command a decent income with their meager education.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Monsey, and Kiryas Joel rely more heavily on government assistance than any community in New York State.

By promoting a value for education and by improving the current system of education, we hope to remedy the extreme levels of poverty within the community and we also hope to foster a generation of educated individuals.

Our previous billboard on the Prospect expressway was a smashing success. It put education back on the map as an issue worth fighting for. Education entered Hasidic discourse when few had been talking about it before. Now we hope to push it to the next level with additional billboards within the Hasidic communities of Boro Park and Williamsburg to encourage people from within the community to speak up on behalf of their children and demand that their Rabbis and Yeshivas begin implementing a better, well-rounded, secular education for their boys.