Ten Year Report
Executive Summary
This annual report describes the activities of Ve’ahavta’s staff members and volunteers over the course of the past year.
Our staff morale is high and we are well supported by an active Board of Directors. The list and variety of our institutional partners (available upon request) is becoming increasingly diverse. Our financial statements are transparent; they show a positive trend and a robust ratio of overhead to project contributions, including significant donations in kind.
We look forward to the year ahead, confident that we will maintain the steady pattern of consolidation and growth that has developed among staff, stakeholders and members of our Board.
Organizational Developments at a Glance
To optimize the effectiveness of all its projects over the course of the past year Ve’ahavta has undertaken various forms of professional development and clarified, consolidated and expanded its activities by developing clear job descriptions for all staff and consultants through the development of logical framework analyses (LFAs) for all project proposals. All project staff have become increasingly familiar with the basics of a Results Based Management (RBM) framework – which is now the standard operating procedure for social and international development projects – as they apply to all of our initiatives.
Projects have been initiated under the close supervision of the outgoing and incoming Presidents of the Board of Directors of Ve’ahavta who, as members of the Executive Committee, meet every five to six weeks with the Co-Directors to discuss financial, administrative and programmatic aspects of Ve’ahavta’s operations. Board meetings have been frequent and the Board has provided active discussion and oversight of all aspects of Ve’ahavta.
Legal Status
Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian & Relief Committee is a registered, non-profit organization based in Toronto. Charitable Reg. #BN88804 2439 RR0001
Directors insurance
Currently, Ve’ahavta’s directors are covered for $2 million in liability with Impact Insurance.
Ve’ahavta and the CJC
As a constituent agency of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) since 1999, Ve’ahavta has voting rights in the CJC plenary.
Articles of Incorporation are available upon request.
Staff Roles and Responsibilities
Ve’ahavta currently has eight full-time staff members and a volunteer roster of close to 1,000. This ratio has allowed Ve’ahavta to leverage its efforts around the world to produce hands-on and widely respected results on the streets of Toronto, in the schools of Regent Park, the Darfurian refugee camps of Chad, in the rainforests of Guyana or fighting HIV/AIDS in rural
Current job descriptions and a description of professional development initiatives undertaken in 2006-2007 are available upon request.
Fundraising and Finances
Fundraising
Ve’ahavta’s fundraising strategy is community-based but concentrates increasingly on direct face-to-face asks with donors who are willing to increase their donations to Ve’ahavta as it has consolidated its reputation in its tenth anniversary year.
There has been a steady growth since 2004, when the number of transactions reached 2500 annually, with total revenue between $850,000 to just under $1 million. Since 2004, we have received $100,000 annually in goods-in-kind.
During Hezbollah’s war on Israel in 2006 donations were diverted from Ve’ahavta’s tikun olam projects and funds donated for emergency response decreased, yet there was an overall increase in Ve’ahavta’s revenues
In sum, despite a diversion of funds from crisis relief in 2007, Ve’ahavta managed to increase its overall income from $830,000 to $850,000.
A full fundraising analysis is available upon request.
Finances
Overall, the co-directors are confident in reporting that we are positioning our activities effectively in the millieu of charitable organizations, demonstrated by the fact that our projects have allowed Ve’ahavta to leverage more than $500,000.00 in goods and services contributed by various donors.
Our auditors have noted that we have been tracking our finances effectively and efficiently due to our close oversight and adoption of an effective database. We have dramatically reduced our debt through the creative use of alternative funds and payback arrangements with partnering organizations.
A financial summary and fiscal year-to-date statements are available upon request.
Local and International Programs and Projects
Local Programs
- Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless (MJRH)
- Homework Club
- Educational and Informational Initiatives
Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless
We continue networking with one of the more effective agencies in the city (North York Community Service) to assist the people with whom we have at least weekly contact to get into more permanent housing.
The MJRH van is deployed in our initiative to aid the homeless. As such, it is highly visible to the community and to the multicultural world of Toronto as an encapsulation and promotion of Jewish values.
We have been fully booked for almost every Sunday, and have always had volunteers on the weekdays. Van supplies are coming in regularly. Schools and the religious institutions continue to support us in various capacities.
We have seen an increase in community involvement as well as requests to speak at schools in Kingston, London and Guelph. We are currently working out the logistics of putting a night van on the streets.
Newcomers’ Homework Club
Ve’ahavta’s Newcomers’ Homework Club (formerly known as the Somali Homework Club) provides a positive space for fifty learners – most of whom are from underprivileged households where English is a second language – seeking assistance with their homework and engaging in a mentorship with Ve’ahavta volunteers. The program is run in partnership with the Regent Park Community Health Center and Frontier College.
We were fortunate to be receiving ongoing sponsorship for the Newcomer’s Homework Club and have been offered annual sponsorship to develop additional Newcomers’ Homework Club sites in the GTA.
Educational and Informational Initiatives
Dates and Locations of educational initiatives, public speaking engagements and facilitated workshops is available upon request
International Projects
Zimbabwe
Kenya
Guyana
Argentina
Israel
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe continues to be a nation in distress and our work there has been challenging and rewarding. A Youth Internship grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) enabled on-site administration of Ve’ahavta’s two projects at the Salvation Army Howard Hospital. Final reports for both CIDA projects, which officially ended in December 2006, are forthcoming.
In July 2006 Ve’ahavta received sponsorship to facilitate shipment of a twenty-foot container of medical supplies to the Howard Hospital. Ve’ahavta secured pharmaceuticals and nursing supplies worth over $160,000 from Health Partners International of Canada and supplied an estimated $100,000 worth of medical and non-medical supplies secured through Ve’ahavta volunteers and donors. Ve’ahavta now facilitates bi-annual shipments of supplies to Zimbabwe, a goal on our agenda since December 2005.
Ve’ahavta facilitated nine volunteer placements at the Howard in 2006-present.
Ve’ahavta is currently exploring ways to raise funds to support an extensive project evaluation at the Howard Hospital. Ve’ahavta has received a proposal for an evaluation and subsequent five-year emergency plan from the Nottawasaga Institute based in Nairobi. Included in this proposal is the development of a five-year strategic plan for Ve’ahavta’s continued work at the Howard. We believe that, during this very trying time of political turmoil and severe economic decline in Zimbabwe, this strategy is our best option to enhance the level of service to our clients in its catchment area.
Through photo exhibits and conference presentations in 2006 Ve’ahavta has continued nurturing its relationship with leaders of the Zimbabwean community residing in the GTA since 2004. We have played a unique role in helping the Zimbabwean community-members to connect to each other and they are now going through a facilitated process to strengthen their community bond. These nascent relationships, too, are a result of Ve’ahavta’s commitment to tikun olam.
Kenya
The AIDS crisis in Africa is reducing the ability of African societies to approach sustainable levels of health care and development. African societies will need development assistance for at least the next two to three decades. This assistance will come from long-term linkages with concerned organizations in Europe and North America.
Linking up with the Jewish community of Kenya and other NGOs on the ground allows Ve’ahavta to provide human resources, material support and capacity-building in order to reduce disease and contribute to the improvement of livelihoods in a democratizing East African country. Such long-term interdependence is a significant contribution in binding Kenya with institutions from democracies like Canada who are striving to reduce the gap in the standard of living between the two countries.
The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) has shown an interest in Ve’ahavta’s initiatives. At a meeting with AMREF’s executive director we discussed the history of our respective organizations and our mandates and Ve’ahavta’s desire to facilitate volunteer placements in Kenya, possibly through AMREF. Discussions about a potential collaboration between Ve’ahavta and AMREF’s local project office are ongoing.
Guyana
2006 – 2007 has been a period of outstanding growth for Ve’ahavta’s Guyana project.
Generous donations from Mel Cohen enabled us, in 2006, to send a needs assessment team to Guyana to interview local stakeholders at community, ministry and NGO levels, make specific recommendations for the future of the project and launch a series of forward planning sessions with local stakeholders in the project.
In 2007, these donations allowed us to hire project support staff to manage on-site logistics and evaluation of the mission.We produced a comprehensive medical report and project evaluation report (available upon request). Our team treated 1550 people at clinic, ran clinics in 14 communities and saw an additional 745 children in local schools. A funding proposal based on a number of capacity-building recommendations made in the 2006 summer needs-assessment and the 2007 medical report will be presented to the CAW Social Justice Fund
Ve’ahavta is engaging in a significant amount of outreach to other NGOs working in Guyana and exploring potential areas of collaboration with groups including Remote Area Medicine (RAM), MATE-FCC (a small group of medical volunteers based out of Queen’s University), and the Society of Obstetrician and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC). Ve’ahavta also recently met with a representative from Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), a well known and highly regarded volunteer agency committed to exploring a number of potential areas of institutional synergy between our respective efforts in Guyana.
Argentina
Ve’ahavta facilitates local working partnerships and focused projects for Ve’ahavta volunteers interested in providing hands-on assistance in the short, medium and long term in Argentina’s urban and rural Jewish communities.
Among Ve’ahavta’s activities in Argentina in 2006 and 2007 were:hands-on volunteering at the Tzedaka Foundation, with the Baby Help Program and at a summer camp for Jewish youth-in-need; cultural exchanges with Hanoar Hatzioni and with University students of Hillel in Buenos Aires; the provision of over $150,000.00 worth of pharmaceuticals to Argentina, which were donated to the Refuot Community Pharmacy.
The relationships, goodwill and momentum we’ve created in Argentina will serve as the foundation for Ve’ahavta’s ongoing involvement with the Jewish communities there.
Israel
Despite the remarkable progress that the embattled state of Israel has made in the last sixty years of its existence it is facing a growing gap between rich and poor. It is in the interest of the professional middle classes of Israel and Diaspora organizations to hasten the rectification of this gap through the development of new Israel/Diaspora partnerships.
Increasing numbers of North Americans Jews are looking for “hands on” opportunities to help Israel and Israelis and they are looking for projects to join to fulfill the goals of tzedakah and tikun olam.
We have opened negotiations with the chief volunteer coordinator of the Municipality of Karmiel, with the Education Centre of Kibbutz Hanaton and with Ben Gurion to partner with Ve’ahavta, first and foremost by placing Canadian volunteers within ongoing Israeli social development programs in order to improve the livelihoods and prospects of Israel’s poorest.
Volunteers and Volunteerism at Ve’ahavta
A three-year Trillium Foundation grant, which was instituted in May of 2004, provided the initial investment to start up Ve’ahavta’s Volunteer Department.
Ve’ahavta has extensive experience in recruiting, training, and managing volunteers with almost one thousand volunteers a year and 8 full time staff.
Entering into our eleventh year with a renewed strategy for growth, the Volunteer Department is concentrating efforts largely on professionalizing the department in a way that reflects the Results Based Management formula we are currently implementing. To this end we are standardizing the application process for prospective volunteers; enhancing our screening process; calculating the value of volunteer hours and re-designing the volunteer page on Ve’ahavta’s website to answer frequently asked questions online.
The experience and knowledge that has been attained through this process will be collected in the Train-the-Trainer Manual for Volunteer Managers (publication forthcoming.) This manual is adaptable to the budget, structure and resources of any small to medium sized not-for-profit agency with a high volume of volunteer activity.
Statistical descriptions and demographics of volunteer activity between June 2006 and June 2007 are available upon request.
Future Challenges and Goals
Animated by tikun olam Ve’ahavta has developed relationships of goodwill and trust across denominations in Toronto’s Jewish community, and has cultivated many fertile interfaith partnerships. We trust that as we move forward we will stand as an example of the commitment to tikun olam that will be emulated across communities of North America.
It is the goal of Ve’ahavta to consolidate the project mode as a way of designing, implementing and monitoring its initiatives within the standard operating procedures common to NGOs. We will enhance the clarity, effectiveness and efficiency of our initiatives by steadily applying the principles of Results Based Management to Ve’ahavta’s social development projects and programs.
As the reputation of our achievements becomes more widely appreciated in the Jewish community as well as in the milieu of grant foundations, we will seek donors to sponsor the core costs of our programs, which will enable us to expand the breadth and depth of our projects.
Our goal – and our challenge – is to ensure that each new generation of Canadian Jewish volunteers at Ve’ahavta is inspired and animated by the mitzvah of tikun olam and that tikun olam remains enacted and recognized as emblematic of Jewish faith, history and tradition.
