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V. Special Agents/Individual And Anonymous
Support ($24,903.86)
As we stated in our report
last year, “Being ‘Sheluchay Mitzvah/Mitzvah Messengers’ is one of the
most exciting and rewarding parts of Ziv work.” There is no other way
to say it — the ability to help individuals in crisis on a one-to-one
basis is especially gratifying and meaningful.
Most often, we are called upon
to help with life’s very basic necessities — to put food on a family’s
table, to pay some utility bills before the services are turned off, to
purchase warm coats and other clothing for two youngsters whose poor family
migrated from the warm Caribbean, to cover the expenses for a critical
medical procedure that would otherwise go undone, or to provide the airfare
for a homeless man to return home to see his dying mother.
This year, there was an additional,
special element to this aspect of our work. One of our teachers, Rabbi
Baruch Goldstein, made a most meaningful donation. Rabbi Goldstein
is a survivor of the Shoah, so through our own research, we found an agent
who identified other individual survivors with very specific and basic
needs. Rabbi Goldstein’s contribution was used to take care of these
needs.
The Rabbi’s donation was made
in memory of his parents, his sister, his brother, all murdered by the
Nazis, and in memory of his beloved wife, who passed away last November.
VI. For Kids, About Kids,
And By Kids (Including College Not-Quite-Kids)
A. Leave it to the Kids
— Broad Meadows Middle School
($3,166.09)
The students who take part
in the Kid’s Campaign at the Broad Meadows Middle School in Quincy, Massachusetts,
along with their very fine teacher, Ron Adams, are quite simply awesome.
We are always surprised by their efforts to end forced child labor. These
young people not only raised funds to build a school in Pakistan, but
also have been mentioned in new human rights books, have spoken at the
United Nations not once, but three times, on Capitol Hill, at untold numbers
of schools, churches and, finally, last December, at the Ziv Mitzvah Heroes
Conference in Providence. Participants at that conference heard more than
twelve of our inspiring Mitzvah heroes, but it was the Broad Meadows kids’
presentation delivered by four outstanding young people that brought the
audience to its feet in a rousing round of applause.
Ziv has always donated supplies
to facilitate the work being done in this program — a filing cabinet,
a fax machine, telephone, paper, stamps, whatever it takes to get the
word out to end child slavery. This year, with the help of some donors
who asked specifically to be part of the kids’ work, Ziv was able to purchase
two new iMac computers (appropriately named the Blues Brothers!) and two
color printers. Before the addition of these computers, the kids worked
on donated equipment that was less than efficient. With the help of our
friend Andy Abbey, who set up the computers and networked them, the Broad
Meadows group has gone on to new heights in their work. We offer the following
excerpt from an e-mail sent by Ron Adams:
Just a quick note to say
thanks again for making our “Kids’ Campaign” more high tech. We are zooming
all over the web, learning daily about child labor, and our chosen country
this year, ETHIOPIA. We have kids on computers nearly every day
after school, especially on Fridays.
Here’s an example of how
the Blues Brothers have helped us help others...the U.S. Department of
Labor created grant money to create an educational web site about child
labor in agriculture. The web designers heard about the Quincy kids and
asked if the Quincy kids would critique their site before it goes online.
The Quincy kids, in teams of two, sat at our 4 online computers and visited
every page of that “Fields of Hope” web site. Each team filled out
a report card (we designed it ourselves on the Blues Brothers) for each
of the 6 sections of their web site….
Seventeen Quincy kids and
I just returned from a four hour “child-labor-free” shopping trip at our
mall. Sixty-one store managers were interviewed briefly by four teams
of Quincy kids. The interview was brief. The interview was a surprise.
The kids politely asked each manager (GAP; Abercrombie & Fitch; Disney;
etc.) “Can you guarantee that everything sold in this store is child labor
free?” The responses of the managers ranged from “I cannot discuss
that subject with you.” to “yes, everything is fine here,” to “I don’t
know, probably not.” The kids filled out an interview sheet to document
what each manager for each store said or wouldn’t say, even food store
managers (did children pick the veggies?). The kids typed up their store
groups and interview sheet on the Blues Brothers. 
Whoa ! What a day this was….
What inspiration these kids
provide!
We have been aware of the Mitzvah
energy generated by all the students at the Ramaz School for a long time.
For many years, lower school students collected lunchroom leftovers and
organized a Junior City Harvest. Today, their dedicated teacher, Ms. Victoria
Ginsberg, continues to lead the middle school students as they collect
hundreds of bags of clothing, thousands of toys, collect and clean winter
shoes and boots and hold bake sales and raffles to raise important Tzedakah
donations. Our funds are being used as seed money for their very special
work.
[Vicki Ginsberg, Ramaz Middle
School, Chesed Club Advisor, 114 E. 85th St., NY, NY 10028, 212-774-8000
X 6266, GinsberV@ramaz.org.]
C. Downtown
Chesed: HUC-JIR Soup Kitchen ($1,014.90)
I come for the big hot meal with the best service
while the piano is played to make it feel even a more festive occasion.
They always make me happy with smiles and graciousness — I feel grace
— right here in the middle of our Monday afternoon routine.
This note, sent by a regular
visitor to the soup kitchen, was slipped under the door of the Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. It says a great deal not only
about the importance of HUC’s once-a-week feeding program, but
also about the manner in which the food is served. In service for
more than 13 years, the soup kitchen serves a hot meal to nearly 100 hungry
people every week. The volunteers, often youth group members from the
tri-state area, serve the meal to each table with a profound sense of
Kavod for each recipient. The work is further enhanced by the volunteers’
study of Torah during the evening.
[HUC-JIR Soup Kitchen, c/o
Rabbi Aaron Panken, Brookdale Center, 1 W. 4th St., NY, NY 10012, 212-674-5300,
apanken@huc.edu.]
D. Dinner
Guests on Campus ($125)
Suzanne Bressler, a student
at Washington University in St. Louis, created a wonderful program: she
gathered students’ unused meal plan tickets and had residents from a local
shelter for homeless people join the students for dinner at one of the
university dining halls. A marvelous program! Contact her
at smbressl@artsci.wustl.edu
to learn more and to develop a similar program on other campuses.
One Kid’s Efforts: As
a twelve year old, David Levitt noticed the wasted food in his school’s
cafeteria. Looking to start a meaningful project for his upcoming Bar
Mitzvah, David approached the school board and asked if he could retrieve
those leftovers. That was the beginning of a project that ultimately resulted
in state legislation mandating the retrieval of leftover food from all
public school lunchrooms. David is now a college student but stands as
a fine example of the power in our children’s hands. His efforts
have resulted in the retrieval of more than 1,000,000 pounds of food for
Florida’s hungry citizens
[David Levitt, 9603 108th Ave.
N., Largo, FL 33773, 727-398-1766, celebrate9@aol.com,
at the Giraffe Project website — www.giraffe.org/giraffe/levitt.htm.
Contributions made out to: “Help for the Harvest,” to be sent to David
at the address listed.]
E. A
Classic Story: Trevor Ferrell ($1,750)
Many years ago, Trevor Ferrell,
then age 11, saw a news story on TV about homeless people in Philadelphia.
Moved to respond, Trevor and his parents gathered up blankets, food and
some warm coats and handed them out to people living on Philadelphia’s
sidewalks. Eventually, they founded Trevor’s Place, a shelter for homeless
people. Though no longer part of that effort, the Ferrell family is part
of other programs that work with kids at risk. Our donation is used to
purchase a book about Trevor’s story, which we distribute to our audiences.
[Inquiries and to order the
book: Ferrell Family Endeavors, Box 21, Gladwyne, PA 19035, Attn:
Frank Ferrell, 610-642-4633, fax: 642-9717, trevorsendeavors@msn.com,
www.trevorscampaign.org .]
As we travel across the country
visiting college campuses, we are struck by the enthusiasm and devotion
students are bringing to all types of Tzedakah programs. Clearly, one
of the most ambitious is Camp Kesem, a summer camp founded by Hillel students
at Stanford University in California. Camp Kesem (“Kesem” means “Magic”)
is a one-week camp open to kids who have lost a parent to cancer or who
currently have a parent diagnosed with the disease. An e-mail from one
of Stanford’s students who worked at the camp describes it best.
Many of the children at
camp had never before met a peer going through what they were going through.
Camp Kesem provided these children with an environment where they could
relate to one another. Being such a special part of those girls’
lives is something that I will certainly carry with me for years to come.
I attribute my experience with them to the fact that they felt so safe,
both physically and emotionally, at Camp Kesem.
My father died when I was
16, and my mother was diagnosed with leukemia one year later. Hearing
12 and 13 year-old girls describe experiences that were so similar to
mine, I found for the first time that there were people who sincerely
understood what I went through. It was their turn to be heard and
listened to, so I did not tell them about my parents, but I took such
comfort in being in that cabin with them. Camp Kesem is one of the best
things that I have been a part of.
Since the 2001 summer session
was such a success, it is the students’ goal to increase the number of
campers this summer and our gift was used to augment their recruitment
and camp staff capabilities.
[Camp Kesem, Hillel at Stanford,
PO Box 20526, Stanford, CA 94309, 650-723-1603, 725-8530 (f), campkesem@yahoo.com,
www.stanford.edu/group/hillel/kesemweb/index.html]
Another example of the power
children have in their hands is the Paperclip Project, publicized in a
steady flow of e-mails about one year ago. Students at the Whitwell, Tennessee,
Middle School vowed to collect six million paper clips to memorialize
the six million Jews killed during the Shoah. To show our support and
belief in their work we purchased nearly $100 worth of paper clips and
had them shipped to the school. Today, the students have collected many
millions more than their initial goal and have also completed an exhibit
complete with a cattle car transported from Germany in which to display
their Holocaust exhibit.
[Whitwell Middle School, Holocaust
Project, S. Roberts/D. Smith, 1130 Main Street, Whitwell, TN 37397, |
