About Us / Our Story
About Friends of Peres Academic Center
An independent community of people who believe a degree should not depend on where someone started.
How It Started
Founded in 2026, Around One Idea
Every year, Peres Academic Center opens its doors to hundreds of students who don't fit the traditional path to a degree. Students who are the first in their family to attend college, who are rebuilding their lives after military service, or who are starting over well into adulthood. For them, getting accepted was never the hard part. Staying, and finishing, was.
Friends of Peres Academic Center was founded in 2026 by a group of people bound together by shared values: a belief in Zionism, in the power of Israeli society to keep renewing itself, and in higher education as one of the most powerful tools for change a person can be given. They kept seeing the same story repeat itself: a student excelling in the classroom, then quietly disappearing from it, not for lack of ability, but because they couldn't afford the therapy they needed, the childcare that let them attend class, or the one semester of tuition they were short.
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We exist because we share a vision: that academia is not just a path to a degree, but an engine of social mobility, resilience, and community, a way for individuals and entire neighborhoods to rebuild and move forward together.
A college runs on more than tuition, and rebuilding a life through education takes more than an acceptance letter. Friends of Peres Academic Center is the independent, donor-funded partnership standing behind every one of these students, filling exactly the gaps that a formal institutional budget cannot. When you give to us, your gift goes directly to a person, not a line item, and to a shared vision of what this community can become.
A short film about the students behind the work.
What Makes Us Different
Where Your Dollar Actually Goes
100% Reaches a Student
No staff member is paid from the fund's payroll, and our giving platform charges no fee. Every dollar you give goes to student programs and welfare.
A Registered U.S. Nonprofit
Friends of Peres Academic Center is a 501(c)(3) organization based in Boca Raton, Florida. EIN 42-3158631.
People Who Know the Campus
Our board is supported by faculty and staff at Peres Academic Center itself, so a gift given in Florida is directed by people who see these students every week.
Who We Are
The People Behind It
A board of American business and community leaders, working alongside faculty and staff on campus in Rehovot.
The Institution We Support
Peres Academic Center, Rehovot
A separate organization, and the reason ours exists. A private, not-for-profit college named in honor of Shimon Peres, founded in 2006 and recognized by Israel's Council for Higher Education since 2008. More than 30,000 students have graduated from it.
Join the Community Standing Behind These Students
Your gift goes directly to a person, not a line item.