We leave at 7:30AM to go to the bus to Sonrise boarding school where the Rebecca Davis Dance Company sponsors 5 boys. JHH sponsors the newest of the five to enrol – Zidane. The bus ride takes two hours. Arriving at the last minute, I’m in the back row – sun blazing on me – while Eugene is in the incredibly uncomfortable foldable middle seat in front of me.

I forgot to tell Jean that we were not leaving at 6:45 but at 8 so he arrived quite really and exhausted, and slept through most of the ride.

Eugene is very interested in symbols so we talked about the seven branched candelabra in the Temple and the peace symbol as well as the meaning of prime numbers in Judaism. His favorite number is 3.

At last, we reached the school. It being a weekend, there were no formal classes though J Do (Jean de Dieu), one of our boys, was chosen to be goalie on the school team and was playing a game – they lost by one goal, having previously won eight games. He gives Rebecca and Eugene big hugs and is very upbeat and animated. He is clear doing very well and has adjusted to his new environment. He shows us his worn out goalie gloves and requests a complete, appropriate goalie outfit. After the July vacation, says Rebecca.

Unfortunately, he confirms our suspicions about another of our boys, whom he says is on probation. Pierre has already said that as a former street kid and a recent arrival, he is being blamed for every item that disappears and is often beaten up. Indeed, his shoulder is quite painful to him.  He looks dejected and morose. We meet the head matron (matrons sleep in the rooms with the boys) who says that he is s difficult boy but offers to have him sleep in her room with the others whom Rebecca has brought to the school. It is hoped that under her watchful eye and without the influence of other difficult children in his current bedroom who may be leading him into bad behavior, Pierre may respond with self-control and continue to be one of the best learners in the school. Our other boys promise to help him change. (Pierre denies that he has stolen anything or started any fighting. More conversations will be had with the administration next week.)

Patrick starts to cry. We remind him of his home. It seems that he feels guilty about having such a positive opportunity while the rest of his family is suffering.  He was born with a partially closed eyelid and complains about eye problems, hoping to get glasses (very popular in Rwandan youth culture) or other treatment. There will be visits to the School Nurse on Monday for the kids’ various ailments and headaches, and then follow-up on Kigali, if necessary.

Zidane, arriving less than two months ago, seems to be happy and very social and is adjusting quickly. They expect him to be the top student. He is 14 and enjoys most: English classes and playing outside.

The boys ask for watches with alarms so, like the others, they can wake up early to review their lessons and can be on time during the day. They also want balls to play with like the other boys bring from home. They ask for Bibles so they can participate more fully in the English classes which use them.

Pierre asks if it would be possible for half of their July vacation to be spent at home and the other half in a safe learning environment. The boys need remedial work and seem eager to do it. Their home situation, if there is one, can be very volatile and problematic. This is why a house is needed for the boys to come to during each of their vacations.

Rebecca asks them if they have continued to dance, and they say that sometimes they do the exercises, but that it is hard to dance without music. Perhaps, they might be given a radio? Patrick agrees to take responsibility for it. It might lend our students a degree of respect as they show what they have learned as dancers.

Rebecca gives them a pep talk, encouraging them to keep trying and learning despite all of the real challenges they face. It is clear that the process of joining a school like this will be quite difficult and that our boys will need continuing support. Eugene will continue to follow their progress closely.

Rebecca is increasingly happy about the name C-Jump for her program, ICAN having already been taken. It refers to a special leap with head and legs back.  Zidane demonstrates it with great enthusiasm. Perhaps, he will be the poster child for the whole project.

JHH will provide watches, Bibles and balls. The Director will decide if a radio would be acceptable and how it might be safe-guarded and controlled.

On the bus tide home, Eugene asks if he could become a rabbi and what I think about homosexuality. It takes almost the whole two hours to respond. He is pleased with answer #1 and disagrees with answer #2.

We take a taxi to Jean’s rental apartment. It is very modest and he is eager to leave (and his landlord wants to use it for someone else). His plan is to move in with his mother in the new house that he and his sister (serving as a peace-keeper in Sudan) are building for her.

We drive an hour to his mother, Jeanne D’Arc’s home. There I see their former house on the same property, built on mud bricks and very small for a family of 5. The new home is beautiful and nearly finished. Jean spends the next hour and a half inspecting the work and negotiating the amounts still due. His mother is lovely but distracted by the house issues. Jean has become quite knowledgeable about all aspects of home-building and is very concerned about how much everything is costing. It will be the nicest house around with enough rooms for us to visit!

The high point for me, listening to incomprehensible conversations in kinye-Rwanda, is sharing pictures of Sebastian which require no words.

During the drive up and back, Jean talks non-stop. I learn about his theories about women and about his Rwandan girl friend living in Buffalo. Maybe we’ll attend the wedding there, if they decide to marry. We’re like two young guys talking about it all. I’ve never heard him talk so non-stop.

Back at the hotel by 76PM, I start writing this, take a shower and meet Jean to go the whole fish without silverware dinner. Unfortunately, once we’re there, they say it will take an hour. We’re too tired and hungry to wait, so it’s delicious fish brochettes.

I’m thrilled that there will be no wake-up call tomorrow morning. I’ll need to get to breakfast by ten and be ready by 1PM to go out with Suzanne’s translators Laura and Aline. Not bad at all.

Ethiopian Immigrants in Rishon LeZion

Addis Tasfa (New Hope) is the name of the long-standing JHH microfinance project for Ethiopian immigrants in the Ramat Eliyahu neighborhood of Rishon LeZion. Of 50 participants in the JHH business training program, 16 have businesses that have been materially enhanced, an extraordinarily high success rate in this kind of work. Two more businesses are expected to open soon. Loans JHH has made through the program are being repaid, though only sporadically.

One store, owned by Shababo (pictured here) is doing very well, selling $3000 wedding outfits. On the other hand, one barbershop and salon  continues to struggle with poor PR and marketing, and has attracted only male customers to date.

The model for the next year will be more like a business club with monthly meetings which will be offered to the 16 successful program graduates, plus owners of a select group of 10 other area businesses. There must be at least 15 participants for the program to succeed. The program will provide expert resource people and one-on-one mentoring. Program members will contribute NIS 200 per participant. JHH expects to continue this program for two years, which is necessary to ensure that most of the graduates’ businesses succeed. The total cost to develop the project will be $30,000 for each of the next two years, after which it will be self-sustaining.

The project will be managed by Lena, CEO of the Supportive Community NGO. Nega, a community organizer, and Nezi, the program coordinator will continue to play important roles. JHH will contribute $4000 toward the $12,000 in staff costs.

The JHH delegates also discussed supporting a food cooperative in the area. JHH will examine this further during the Fall trip.

The JHH group agreed to help the director of the Ramat Eliyahu Community Center to create an Ethiopian youth orchestra by collecting used musical instruments they need. So far 13 of the 21 needed instruments have been collected.  JHH will have them repaired and bring them to Israel.

Ofakim Community Garden

In Ofakim, the JHH delegation visited a one acre plot being developed by JNF that will be devoted to a community garden and outdoor gathering center. Students from the surrounding elementary schools will participate in programs run by teens at risk. There will be environmental and recycling centers, and perhaps also a pluralist Beit Midrash. The facility will include a village for 50 university students who will volunteer at the center. The MetroWest Federation partnership will contribute $5000, which JHH match with a $5000. contribution. Itzik, who sells toys for a living, will be the JHH local leader.

Area of the Carmel Fires

Rabbi Edgar Nof (a Reform rabbi in Haifa) took the JHH group to visit Beit Oren, the kibbutz which was devastated by last year’s Carmel fires. There they meet an  immigrant from Argentina named Imi and her son Yiftach. Imi is a potter whose studio and cafe were totally destroyed in the fires. JHH give her funds for a new potter’s wheel and a gift for Yiftach for his recent Bar Mitzvah. JHH also helped Rabbi Nof to pay for the cost of the Bar Mitzvah and celebration, which the congregation had funded. Imi invited JHH back for the mezzuzah hanging when her studio is restored in its new and potentially lovely location. She was embarrassed to accept the help but said that the fire brought so many good people into her life. JHH was glad that we could be included among them.

Jewish Helping Hands is considering creating a more lasting relationship with this kibbutz.

At the suggestion of Rabbi Nof, JHH brought a new computer for Tamir, a young boy in a particularly difficult family situation with little to be happy about. Tamir was overjoyed by the computer. He hooked it up immediately and sent his first email to JHH’s Rabbi Soffin. Rabbi Nof was sure that JHH had just changed his life and given him a reason to smile and a gateway to a personal sanctuary, connecting with friends through the internet.

Gypsy Community in East Jerusalem

The JHH delegation met with Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center. Anat is a leading civil rights and social activist in Israeli society.

At JHH’s request, Anat spoke to the delegation about which group in Israel is neediest, and they were surprised to learn that it is the Gypsies. There are 5,000-10,000 Gypsies in East Jerusalem, where they are regarded as the lowest group in Palestinian society and are openly ridiculed in public and in school. Virtually no Jews know anything about them.

The JHH delegation met with Amoun Sleem of the Domari Association for the Advancement of Gypsies in Jerusalem. She took us into East Jerusalem to see the situation firsthand.

Expected in her culture to be a beggar, Amoun has had a hard life, but has risen above it to get an education. She began her organization in 1999 despite opposition from elders including her father. Gypsies are Muslims; most cannot read or write.

Amoun’s group needs 6 computers for the kids to use, plus tables and chairs for them. This will improve their English, in part because they will enlist American volunteers to teach them. The JHH group saw the many traditional crafts the women there are making as they increase their self-esteem and earn some desperately-needed money. Husbands oppose birth control, so most Gypsy women have 8 or 9 children. Amoun’s dream is to have a place in the Jewish side of the city for Jews and Arabs to patronize where women will work at sewing machines.

For the JHH Fall visit, it will be helpful to bring them: toys and children’s clothes; deodorant, toothbrushes/paste, small shampoos and lotions, and other toiletries;  school supplies (notebooks, pens, pencils); and even hard candies as rewards for extra studying; pampers and dried milk. JHH will bring at least three laptops, which is Amoun’s specific request.

Other Projects and Possibilities

• The Jewish Helping Hands delegation visited with the mayor of the Druse village of Hurfeish, whom JHH had met previously. He took the JHH group to meet Druse who are part of a women’s circle reviving the traditional weaving and handcrafts of their people.
• JHH will consider creating a modest micro-finance project with Druse women who are eager to create their own businesses, despite the cultural restrictions placed on them.
• In partnership with  Livnot U’l’hibanot (To Build and Be Rebuilt), the delegation participated in a home restoration in Tzfat, where they spent a day scraping and painting.
• JHH was presented with an exciting potential partnership with the town of Shlomi near Rosh HaNikra on the Lebanon Border. This is a small town of 12,000 or 14,000 inhabitants with few support services. The mayor is a locally born electrical engineer and non-politician. The head social worker, Sharona Yosef, runs whatever social services there are.  There is no administrative bureaucracy to deal with. They have many needs and JHH will look for projects to design together when its delegation visits in the Fall.
• JHH donated $500 to Rabbanit Kapach, who uses the funds to provide Passover food baskets for poor Jewish families.
• The JHH group visited the Shalit family, whose son Gilad was kidnapped by Hamas five years ago, to show its support.

“Blessed are You… Who strengthens the weary.”
Morning Blessings

“Thanks for not forgetting us. We so often feel abandoned.”

Rabbi Soffin met Winnie, who spoke the words above, ffor the first time in the neighborhood of Mont Kigali in Rwanda. She lives on a street with eleven other genocide widows who lost their families in the 1994 “war.” One month after the women moved into these government-built homes in January 2010, there was a severe rain storm with high winds, and most of their roofs were severely damaged. Winnie still cooks in her roofless kitchen weather permitting.

Peter, an orphan who lives with three siblings, lost the roof on his home. He took parts of it and used them to rebuild the roof on an uninhabited house. Then he invited Philomena, an elderly genocide widow with three children whom she’s taken in and whose roof was also destroyed, to share the house with him. When the storm came, she thought the war had broken out again. She keeps her room locked so she’ll feel safe when she hears the sounds of people moving outside.

Rabbi Soffin went to Mont Kigali with Assumpta, the leader of AVEGA, the Association of Genocide Widows, of which she is one herself. He had told her that JHH would expand the number of genocide widows and orphans sponsored from ten to fifteen. She agreed to identify the additional five and to introduce them to him.

So Assumpta went to Mont Kigali to assess the need. Six of the eleven houses had suffered roof damage, but the women decided that they each had severe needs. Instead, they proposed a lottery in which one of their daughters, Deborah, would pick the five to receive our support. Deborah’s own family was not chosen, but Winnie and Peter and Philomena were.

As Rabbi Soffin talked with the five, the six not selected watched from their doorways. They were happy for their neighbors but sad that they would not receive this desperately needed help. Rabbi Soffin could not walk by them. So he said that JHH wouldSPONSOR ALL 11. Needless to say, there was great joy among them and their neighbors. As one woman said: “YOU ARE SAVING MY LIFE.”

It costs $500 to support one such family for a year. With that money, they can grow vegetables, buy a goat or a rabbit, start a small business and most importantly, have renewed hope for the future. They know it’s true – the original ten have done just that and now their loves are filled with hope.

Please help to fulfill the promise Rabbi Soffin made to them.

When he was leaving, the eleven women said to him: “God bless you.“ And may God bless you as well. Thanks for caring.

Proverbs 22:6

Nicholas Kristof challenged us to help build a school in Cambodia so girls will not be forced into prostitution. As he wrote in December, 2006, “Literate girls not only are in less danger of being trafficked, but later they have fewer children, care for their children better and are much better able to earn a decent living.”

Education has a very high value in Jewish life. The study of Torah and Talmud sharpens our minds, young and old alike, and opens up the possibilities of a good and meaningful life. We want to extend these possibilities for a decent future to the young people of Cambodia. They are bright, and they want to learn.

What our school is like

We have donated the money to have a school building constructed in Lvea Em in the Kandal Province. It has five rooms, so operating double shifts with fifty students in each class, some five hundred will one day be learning at the JHH school. There is a generator and ten new computer stations on line through the satellite dish on the roof. There is a well and a filter, a specially trained English/computer teacher and so much more.

Once there was a boy who could not read or write. All he knew were the names of the letters of the alphabet. He would sit outside the school room and recite them over and over again, hoping that someday they would join together to make words and paragraphs. One day, the teacher heard him and realizing how eager he was to learn, she invited him into the class.

That’s what twenty-five of us did on Thursday, February 19th, 2009. Like that teacher, we invited the first sixty-nine bright youngsters to enter their new middle school. We shared in their excitement and enthusiasm. We brought in nearly 1300 pounds of clothing, book supplies and sports equipment. We played jump rope and soccer, used yo-yo’s, made drawings and balloon sculptures and gave out school bags filled with supplies. But most of all, we embraced and were embraced by these wonderful, exuberant children.

Now they have hope for a much better future.

Arun’s Precious Orphans

Sothea Arun was four years old when the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla force that ruled Cambodia from 1975-1979, entered his village and forced its residents to leave at gunpoint. In the work camp, Arun was forced to collect animal dung for fertilizer.

The Khmer Rouge enforced obedience. To disagree, to scavenge for food, to cry at the death of a loved one – these offenses could result in death. Arun survived several weeks in a Khmer Rouge prison as punishment for picking fruit from trees.

When the Khmer Rouge left, Arun began walking in search of his village. One hundred fifty miles later he arrived home, only to learn that no one from his extended family remained. Thirty-six members had died or disappeared.

Arun survived the next years by exchanging his labor for shelter and food. He made his way to the capital city of Phnom Penh, where he joined other youth living on the street. They organized students and monks to clear garbage from the city and, later, to plant trees. They studied together, learning English and business skills, and discussed how to heal their country.

Whenever Arun sees orphaned and abandoned children, he is reminded of his own past. He does not want other children to experience what he did.
Arun made a promise to himself: if I can survive, I’ll go back to my village and make sure no orphans will suffer as I did. He has kept his promise, and we are helping him to support 63 orphans. For $150 a year, their foster families receive rice money so the children aren’t sent out to sell trinkets and can attend school. The children receive three sets of uniforms so they are not stigmatized.

For an additional $50, they will have a bicycle to ride to school.

When we gave him ten suitcases filled to overflowing, he was in tears. When we interacted with the children, we were, too.

This is part of what he wrote to me (in his words):

What you have done in my village are highly remarkable and valuable things we never had before. Twenty-five years ago, when I as well as other students wanted to go to the secondary school, I had to walk and swim for over two hours every day and always dream one day we would have school near home. Now the school appears in the village. Truly, this young generation is very lucky and has to say thanks to you for big heart.

The wonderful thing is that Arun’s middle school aged orphans attend our school.

Arun and the children were sure that we were a blessing to them, but the truth is that we were the ones who were blessed.

How To Help This Program

Support one of Arun’s orphans for $150 a year or $1500 for the entire ten years of schooling. Buy one or more bicycles for them at $50 each. Ask a bike shop to help or organize a bike race to raise “bicycle money.”

Update: we will be returning to Cambodia next Fall to visit our school and Arun’s orphans. We’re speaking with Habitat Cambodia to arrange for a home-building project, too.

The Rwandan Center For Mind-Body Balance
Offering healing modalities for the mind body and spirit
 Dedicated To Stopping Intergenerational Trauma as a Result of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Scientific research supports the positive effects of contemplative and yoga based- practices on the mind, body and spirit.

Suzanne Levy, one of our JHH members was in Kigali, Rwanda in 2011 to teach a 3-day workshop to provide trauma relief to 28 students at the National University. This was the culmination of a year’s partnership with Phocas Mazimpaka, the founder of the University’s Yoga Peace Club. Theprevious year they had met by chance at a village where Suzanne was teaching a yoga class connected to a JHH project to build privacy latrines for girls so they would continue their education.

On the last day Phocas was surprised to learn that Suzanne was a Jew. “So you understand,” he told her. This comment humbled her and allowed her more deeply to understand the power of her work on behalf of JHH.

Suzanne, made a commitment to return to Rwanda in 2012 to train members of the Darchei Shalom (Paths of Peace) project. Yoga teachers and health care providers will learn methods to reduce stress and trauma rooted in contemplative practices specifically designed to address cultural challenges. Jewish Helping Hands will support these efforts to help this new generation of educated, young survivors heal themselves and begin to rebuild and heal their country.

How You Can Help

Jewish Helping Hands is seeking support from those who understand the transformative effects of this work   Those in the yoga community, health professionals, and those who practice MBSR will especially understand how powerful your gift of financial support can be. For more about the 2011 workshop, click here.

Over the course of 3 days, students learned movement, breath work and meditation techniques, and studied the effects of stress and trauma on the nervous system. Some participants were members of the Yoga Peace Club; others were students majoring in psychology and other health care professions with no yoga or meditation experience.

Each day was filled with new experiences and discovery. The students began to understand how subtle thoughts, both negative and positive, effect changes in the body, how specific breathing techniques can shift the balance and connection between the mind and body.

Participant Comments from the 2011 Workshop

• This program came at a time when I surely needed it. I have been stressed and feel headaches but at this moment I feel okay… I lost my friend 4 days ago and was angry with everyone and everything but due to the fact that I attended this program it’s like my mind has been cleansed and now I can joke and engage myself with others and we laugh. I wish to invite you to come back 

• This program made me realize the importance of working as a grou. Usually when I exercise I rarely notice what others are doing, and how one’s energy motivates others.  I hope to continue to use what I’ve learned to help myself and others in need.  God bless you!

• Before it wasn’t easy for me to breath well but now I know well how to do it and use it. I am studying to be a social worker and this will be helpful to know how to enhance people’s well being and for Rwandan society in general. Thank you for all you have done   Keep it up – it is wonderful and helpful. Be blessed.

• I am a member of the yoga club but I didn’t know how to do breathing and meditation. In this I feel very well in my head and very happy for it. I feel well in the parts of my body that felt bad.

• I like this program and I think it will make a change in my life.

• I will be a clinical psychologist and this experience will help me help people who present with trauma particularly during the commemoration period of the 1994 genocide in our country. The exercises will help me when I get stressed out and for reducing the stress of others. Thank you for this training.

• As a personal observation, I realize that everybody was motivated and engaged in this program and it has made a change in the people who attended.  This shows that the work has been well done and the way of teaching was very good. It would be better if we could extend this workshop and train more people so we can make a project for helping people all over the country.

Pirkei Avot 5:21

In our experience with building projects, one of the frustrating aspects has been that many of our building partners do not accept young teens as participants. As a result, we created a program, in partnership with Sara Losch, Director of Lifelong Learning of the Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, NJ. We call it in Hebrew Bonim Banim or for short Bet Bet- Building Youth. It is a way of including younger teens in the holy work.

What We Have Done…

In August of 2008, we brought some twenty students who were entering grades nine and ten to the Portland, Me. area to help reconfigure the home of a woman who was soon to need a wheelchair. We partnered with PROP (People’s Regional Opportunities Program) There were teen volunteers from our host congregation Bet Ha’am in South Portland, Me. and from the Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, among others.

In August of 2009, our teens worked in the Boston, Mass. area to help restore a residential recovery facility for thirty women and their infant children. We partnered with SMOC (Southern Middlesex Opportunity Council) and our host congregation was Rabbi Neal Gold’s Shir Tikva, with support from the Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, NJ, and Temple Shalom in Succasunna, NJ.

These are experiences in Jewish religious living. They include, in addition to the building work, creative Jewish worship and the study of traditional texts dealing with tzedakah, charity and righteous loving. The adult team includes teachers and building experts. We have lived together in a large Maine summer home and in a Massachusetts hotel, sharing the responsibilities of daily life. In each location, we explored the local area to understand the impact of work like ours on the general community.

This inspiring weeklong experience is open to teens whose families are members of Reform congregations. The cost in the past has been $1000, which has included everything except travel to the location, personal expenses, night out and gifts.

“To help another become self-supporting, by means of a loan… that is the highest level of tzedakah” Maimonides

We learned in Mexico how valuable small loans can be to future entrepreneurs. Building on that successful experience, we decided to apply the principles of micro-finance to the Israeli Ethiopian population, many of whom were not succeeding in the more modern Israeli society. Beginning in 2008, we held a series of meetings in New Jersey and in Israel with members of the Ramat Eliyahu neighborhood in Rishon LeZion, not far from Tel Aviv.

With them and representatives of MetroWest Federation and the Koret Foundation, as well as the local Municipality and Community Center and other groups already working with this population, we designed a program to provide all of the necessary training and loans up to $5000. We went to Israel five times in the first year to become an integral part of the process and to earn the participants’ and our partners’ trust. Thirty-five Ethiopian Israelis men and women graduated that year.

Five of them received loans to open or enhance these businesses: an upscale clothing store, a hair salon, an ethnic Ethiopian store, a grocery and a spices shop.

There was a high level of commitment by the participants who came on time, did the homework, learned their lessons well and saw changes in their personal lives. They responded to the trainers and enjoyed the learning process, even laughing together at times.

At the graduation ceremony, one participant said: “Once there was a man who brought us an idea and now all of us together made it a reality.” One of our partners added: “I thought this would never work. Look at us now – 23 men and 12 women!” All at once, it was no longer so unusual to see an Ethiopian-owned business in Rishon LeZion.

Why was this the first such program to succeed where others had failed with the Ethiopian community? We were a true partnership and every representative saw the program as his or her own. When there was a problem, they pulled together and solved it. When the participants were frustrated or unhappy, they listened to them and acknowledged their concerns.

In Ethiopia, 99% of them were independent and self-employed. Here they are at best workers. We give them back their independence and their dignity. Eitan Paldi, our independent program evaluator, wrote these words: “We believe that Addis Tasfa has significantly helped to advance the Ethiopian community, by the feeling of empowerment and by the many benefits they received from participating, beyond the receiving of loans and business training.”

We are told that there is an old Ethiopian proverb: one filament spun by a spider is weak and easily broken, but a web can capture a tiger. So it is with us as well. Pulling together we can work miracles in the lives of these families.

The second year class is almost completed. Won’t you help us provide the training and the loans for its graduates?

How To Help This Program:

Join with friends and/or business owners to sponsor one participant in Addis Tasfa and help to provide all or part of a loan ($5000).

Maimonides

What is Micro-Credit?

On a recent trip to Nogales, Mexico sponsored by the Jewish Funds for Justice, we asked Kiko Trujillo what we could do to ease the plight of those crossing into the United States illegally. We had learned that virtually all of the females who make the dangerous trek across the desert are harassed and that people are dying each day. We sought a way to ease their plight.

Kiko responded by encouraging us to support the micro-credit program sponsored by the Catholic Relief Services in Arizona.

Micro-credit is very small loans (beginning as low as $200) which enable the very poor to carry out their own entrepreneurial ideas. With this source of credit, they can use their own initiative and creativity to create small businesses, which will support their families. Often the borrowers are women who become empowered in this way and prove to be excellent businesswomen.

They are organized in “banks” or groups of twelve to fifteen new entrepreneurs who help and support each other. They take on joint responsibility for the repayment of the individual loans. All of this is based on the original insights of Mohammed Yunus, a Nobel Prize winner, in his successful efforts to help millions of citizens of Bangladesh escape lives of extreme poverty and hopelessness. (See his book: Banker to the Poor.)

What We Planned To Do

We are creating a bank. Every four months the loans will be repaid. In addition, the entrepreneurs will add a relatively low amount for interest and will also put aside five percent for savings. They will meet as a group every two weeks to share experiences. At each meeting, 1/8 of the loan will be repaid.

For the first four months, a maximum loan of $200 is available. For the next four months, $400. For the third four month period, $600 and the fourth and last four month period up to $800.

With the support of the Sisterhood of the Barnert Temple, Franklin Lakes, NJ, we hope to raise $12,000 to support our bank in the long-term.

The first $3,000 has already been sent.

We met the members of our bank over Labor Day Weekend. It gave us a chance to see the training and CRS teams in action. In this way, specific entrepreneurs can be sponsored.

Beginning in December 2005 – four months after Hurricane Katrina – supporters of the Foundation went for the first of three trips to New Orleans to help rebuild homes. In 2005, with help from the Jewish Federation and the Reform Jewish Movement, we partnered with Temple Sinai and stayed in the homes of Jewish families. We put sheetrock on four homes that had been gutted and remediated from mold.

A Time to Plant Flowers

The following December 2006, we partnered with the Touro Synagogue and Rabbi Andrew Busch. Volunteers for America through Cathie Peterman connected us to the Vine Baptist Church and Pastor Jeanjacques, with whose help we identified two homes in the Upper Ninth Ward in need of repair. One owner took three days to come out from her FEMA trailer on the property but soon began to plant flowers in areas we had prepared.

The Work Continues…

We returned in December 2007. This time we partnered with Rebuilding Together which found us an appropriate home belonging to the Proffitts. The organization made sure that neighborhood services and a sense of real community will be renewed as well. We were supported by Congregation Gates of Prayer and Rabbi Robert Loewy. Once again, it was a week of Jewish Religious Living, combining physical work, worship and study.

Special Family, Special Help

We have made a deep connection with one of the few Jewish policemen in New Orleans. He stayed through the aftermath of the hurricanes to help others. His house had shifted on its foundation and could not be restored. When he gave an unscrupulous contractor $40,000 to start building a new one and lost it all, we raised enough money to replace it completely. We look forward to seeing the progress being made on it in December. Listen to his daughter sing a “duet” with Louie Armstrong in the video “Four Months Later.”