2015 Grant Recipients

1. Mission for African Mothers, Uganda

Nathan is the 24-year-old volunteer, full-time Director of MAM (Mission for African Mothers – pronounced, of course, Mom. He heads a totally volunteer staff.

Our $5000 partnership with MAM is a two-pronged project called Single Expectant Mothers Economic Empowerment Program. One part focuses on the health and well-being of the future newborns by providing a year of free medical care. The other is a full-blown micro-finance training program, including vocational training in three areas (tailoring, hair-dressing and handicrafts) and culminating in $80, interest-free, loans to be repaid.

This will be its second year, after a successful one in which all were repaid, to be used for additional loans. The training has begun with the receipt of our grant and the possibility of additional funds from a Canadian partner.

There are 20 expectant mothers in our group, chosen from the five slum areas on which MAM focuses. What businesses would they like to create? Twenty hands are raised: a jewelry store, a stationery shop, a cosmetics/bookstore, a hardware store and a restaurant that would serve every kind of food from sushi (!) to spaghetti to hamburgers!

The Center will provide a homemade lunch as well as computer training. They have only two computers. We have three more for them but need to find someone coming to Uganda who can bring them in. Any ideas?

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2. Family Promise Carbon County, Philadelphia

Located in the nearby Pocono region of Pennsylvania, Family Promise of Carbon County aids homeless and low income families by providing shelter, meals and living essentials.  Since the organization began in 2011, 28 families have gone through the program, including 37 adults and 25 children.  Family Promise maintains a guest house that provides a home base for the current program guests during the days, and local partners such as churches and community centers provide overnight housing as well as dinners.

The goal of the organization is to return the participating families to a stable home environment, allowing guests to stay in the program for a maximum of 90 days.  As a part of the program, guests participate in life skills courses, learning skills in money management, legal aid, and home economics among others.  Through the efforts of the small but dedicated staff and board, families who go through the program are able to move on to a permanent housing situation in an average of 50 days!

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3. Light of Esperanza (Hope) – LOE – Honduras (Year 2)

We are continuing our very productive partnership with Shmuel and his extended family in Honduras.

After a most successful project teaching poorly educated teens how to create and run a corn cooperative, we are now enabling LOE to create a similar program in Jose del Basque for a group of women to establish a cooperative tilapia fish pond project ($1650).

Fish ponds were chosen because they had been most successful in the past. “It really does work and I think it is a great first initiative in any new village,” wrote Jason, a member of our Committee who visited there.

The grant will also continue to cover school scholarships for two teens, Delmer and Melvin, to enable them to complete their last year of secondary school. ($1000)

Here is part of a letter that Delmer sent to us:

“Thank you Jewish Helping Hands for your help in our studies. With my grades, I am doing very good in the five subjects and have received the following grades: Science (90%), Technical Drawing (94%), Social Studies (98%), Civics (95%), and the Special Project (93%). 

I want you to know that it is an honor to work (represent) your organization, to belong to a group that is fighting to help improve the life of so many people. Thank you.”

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4. Rez Refuge Ministries – Arizona – $2500 (Year 2)

The Ft. Defiance neighborhood continues to need the Youth Fellow program because it needs people who believe that good things can come from what they have there. When they find young people who have that hope and vision, they provide them with an incentive to step in and be leaders.

In a streamlined version of last summer’s project, 3 Youth Fellows will be paid summer interns who work closely with the programming team to plan and execute summer programming for children and teenagers. They will receive leadership development training, workshops on poverty, power, and community organizing, and build close relationships with the adult team and one another that will help build their confidence, academic achievement, and influence in the neighborhood.

The Rez teenagers need to be challenged. The Youth Fellow program provides jobs for them in a town with a 57 percent unemployment rate. The program also helps by creating more community ownership of Rez Refuge among young people.

Ultimately, the Youth Fellow program is about community involvement, youth representation on the team, and youth power to make change. It is a laboratory for social change. It creates a refuge for their ideas and helps them realize those dreams. In a town where most residents fear our neighborhood, Rez Refuge is demonstrating that beauty and growth can come from what looks to be dangerous and in decay. The Youth Fellows help to do just that.