2005 AJC ACCESS is created to tap emerging Jewish leaders , to engage and empower them to be advocates in their local communities and to create global change .
2005 In response to devastating natural disasters around the world , AJC contributes more than $ 2.5 million for relief funds and reconstruction projects to assist victims of the recent South Asian undersea earthquake and tsunami and Hurricane Katrina . The funds are drawn from the Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Humanitarian Fund , originally created to respond to both man-made and natural disasters around the world . Throughout the following decade , the Fund , together with earmarked AJC campaigns , would go on to donate millions of dollars in humanitarian aid across the world through the Israeli NGO IsraAID .
2005 Seeking to strengthen ties to Latinos , the largest minority group in America , and to build trilateral bridges between the U . S ., Latin America , and Israel , AJC establishes the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs .
2005
August 2005 Hurricane Katrina originates as a tropical depression , making landfall in Florida before strengthening over the Gulf and making landfall again over southeast Louisiana and Mississippi as a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane . Estimates put the death toll as high as 1,836 and the cost of damage at $ 125 billion .
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