(JTA) – Amid growing immigration from Brazil to Israel, Brazilian Jews living in the Jewish state last week launched “Olim MeBrasil,” an organization devoted to facilitating the absorption of the newcomers. “Olim” is the Hebrew work for people who make aliyah. “The idea came with the increase in olim coming from Brazil year after year, and the forecast is that this increase is not temporary and will continue during the upcoming years,” the group’s vice president, Gladis Berezowsky, told JTA. “It’s an NGO by Brazilians for Brazilians.”

Brazil has approximately 120,000 Jews. Brazilian Jews were the sixth largest group to make aliyah in 2016 with some 700 olim, according to the Jewish Agency. Yigal Palmor, the Jewish Agency’s director of public affairs and communications, told JTA that his organization expects a 30 percent increase in aliyah from Brazil this year, to 900 people, though he added that the factors that result in aliyah are too varied to allow for an accurate forecast.

Brazil’s business sector is attempting to weather the country’s worst financial crisis, in which a stagnant economy is buoyed primarily by foreign investments. The country’s currency, the real, has lost about half its value against the dollar since 2011. But political instability, the result of corruption scandals at the highest levels, is scaring off investors. Brazil has relatively low levels of antisemitic incidents.

In 2014, the Beit Brasil project was created to support Brazilian immigrants in Israel as well as potential immigrants in Brazil. The 120-member network of Brazilian volunteers spread across the Jewish state is a branch of the Latin American Organization in Israel, or OLEI.