Founded in 1949, it houses over 850 boys aged 12 to 20 on its 18 acres (7.3 ha) Bayit Vegan campus,[3] and provides on-site religious, secular, and technological education on the junior high through college levels.

During the second half of the 1950s, vocational schools for printing, precision mechanics, and furniture design were opened, and the first high-school class was graduated.

[20] Students attend grades 7 through 12 on campus, completing the full academic curriculum mandated by the Israel Ministry of Education.

In 2012 the school received a special commendation from the Israel Ministry of Education for the large number of students passing the Bagrut examinations in 2010 and 2011.

The Ministry noted that 73.5% of Boys Town Jerusalem graduates earned full matriculation certificates, compared to a national average of 50% of high-school students.

The Shachak program trains a select group of electronics students for work on technological support teams in the Israel Air Force.

[22] Courses at the College of Applied Engineering include electronics, computer science, precision mathematics, and computer-aided design and manufacturing.

[24] Among the products developed by Boys Town Jerusalem engineering students are a hand-held orientation device for the blind and a security system for Israeli settlements.

[3] Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, victim of the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings, taught a ninth-grade class in the French program before his move to France.

Other fund-raising branches are located in North Miami Beach, Florida, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Toronto, and London.

[32][33] In 1996, Boys Town Jerusalem inaugurated the Jan Zwartendijk Award for Humanitarian Ethics and Values, named for a non-Jewish Dutch businessman who rescued more than 2,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

In the 2000s this award was bestowed on other Holocaust-era rescuers such as Giovanni Palatucci,[34] President Manuel Luis Quezon and the people of the Philippines,[9][35] and Ho Feng-Shan.