Fall is nearly here with cold weather just around the corner. We are looking for the following items:

• Socks
• Winter gloves
• Scarves/neck warmers
• Toques
• Men’s underwear, especially sizes small and medium
• Women’s underwear
• Long underwear (men’s and women’s)
• Sleeping bags and blankets
• T-shirts (large and extra large preferred)
• Rain ponchos and waterproof jackets
• Jeans (Mens) sizes 30 – 38
• Mens shoes sizes 8-12
• Razors (2 blade strongly preferred)
• Polysporin
• Shampoo
• Brushes

To donate, please contact Eric Cisterna at 416-964-7698, ext. 17 or eric@veahavta.org

Welcome to Three Days on the Street.

For the next three days we encourage you to think about homelessness and all those that don’t have a home. Homelessness in a rich nation such as Canada is not necessary.

For the next three days we are having events that we would like you to attend.

Tonight we are having an open mic. Please join us for an evening of sharing our talents and stories.

OPEN MIC – TODAY AT 7:30 pm
280 GERRARD STREET EAST (BASEMENT COMMON ROOM)

Snacks and Refreshments will be served.

Hope to see you there.

Please see a complete list of events as well as our Comedy Show Flyer.

The reception for the Kinder Kits was overwhelming.

The Rabbi could not believe the generosity and care in organization that had been put into making the Kinder Kits.

I spent a few minutes describing the program. He was in disbelief when I quoted our explosion of growth and the means by which we attain our donations. He mentioned that it was the function of the Principal’s office to help those in need and he was truly grateful for the support so that they can focus on other issues.

Thank you for providing this opportunity to distribute the Kinder Kits. It’s wonderful to feel the goodness that we bring to the people we serve.

- Anonymous Kinder Kit Volunteer

Day 4 Haiti

We had yet another wonderful day. I must tell you that as I write there is a tremendous thunderstorm – the first rains I’ve experienced here so far.

Our morning began with a meeting with our partner Food For the Poor (FFTP) Haiti. Ve’ahavta is working with FFTP Canada to facilitate four shipments of food and one shipment of educational supplies to Haiti between now and March. FFTP Haiti is a massive operation with major distribution capabilities to 3,000 local partners. They also run local projects – feeding programs, a medical clinic, orphanages, schools, homes for the aged and the disabled. House of Hope (HOH) managed to get on their registered agencies list and now gets monthly allocations of rice and beans along with other items that FFTP may have on hand, including shoes, clothes, etc. On top of this, our shipments over the next seven months will ensure that HOH gets its full monthly requirement of rice and beans (they go through 30 fifty lb bags of rice per month) which will free up some funds to support other aspects of daily life at the orphanage. We are also planning to ship 3,000 kinder kits this December.

After our meeting, we were treated to incredible hospitality at Gachette’s beautiful home. We got to see the photos of his amazing children and ate a delicious traditional Haitian meal. Alison and I could hardly believe it when we saw a huge bottle of Manischewitz wine on his wine rack! He loves the stuff. We explained how that wine is the ultimate experience of shabbat in Jewish households around the world, and Gachette immediately suggested we open it. So if you can only imagine, Alison and I were soon sitting on a rooftop with Debra and Gachette in Port au Prince, sharing a meal, toasting with Manischewitz and teaching our colleagues how to say “l’chaim”!

Alice soon joined us, and after Debra and Gachette left for a meeting, she took us to a local market where we invested in the local economy by stocking up on crafts. One of Alice’s “kids”, an artist named Pierre Jules, had joined us and brought, at our request, some of his paintings which we were thrilled to purchase to support his art career. I am sure his beautiful work will hang proudly in Ve’ahavta’s offices and local classrooms very soon.

After returning to the hotel and reconnecting with Gachette and Debra, we soon left again. We had been invited to join Ruth Messinger, President of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), at a roundtable she had organized at a hotel in Petionville. Ruth has been in Haiti this week as well with a contingent of AJWS supporters. It was a tremendous opportunity to share with them the work that Ve’ahavta is doing in Haiti. We were then invited to join them for dinner and listen to two women connected with the microfinance organization Fonkoze share the incredible story of their work in Haiti. Fonkoze are local partners of AJWS. Ve’ahavta is a member of the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief (JCDR), a coalition in which AJWS plays a significant role. Fonkoze was a recipient of a grant from the JCDR. As contributors to the Coalition’s Haiti fund, we have directly supported Fonkoze’s work in Haiti and it was an unexpected and thrilling opportunity to receive an in depth overview of their incredible efforts here.

Gideon Hersher, JDC’s representative here in Haiti, was there as well. As he drove us back to our hotel, I reflected on a chat I had briefly with an editor of the Jewish Forward, who was at the roundtable this evening. She said, “there is a Jewish story here in Haiti”. Leaving the meeting I thought, “there certainly is”.

I can’t believe how quickly our time has flown and how full it has been. This is a wonderful and heartbreaking place. We have seen some incredible need and have seen firsthand how our work is making an impact at the community level. It has been wonderful to make connections with so many partners and learn more about some amazing work that is being done. There is still much to do.

Tomorrow morning we fly home and begin to build a three year plan for our continued work in Haiti. I am looking forward to that process. I must acknowledge and thank the wonderful Alison Cohen, a member of our Board and a long time Ve’ahavta supporter. Alison’s cross cultural experience (she cycles around the world) and project management savvy (she is a consultant in that area), as well as her humour and generosity of spirit and her deep sense of humanitarianism made her an invaluable addition to this trip and I am grateful for her involvement.

Thanks as well to my colleagues in Toronto who have been making every effort to share my postings and the incredible work Ve’ahavta continues to do with our network of supporters. See you all again very soon!

-Sarah

Another incredible day.

With each day, with each hour, I find my perspective shifting. I am realizing, for example, that while during my first few days here it seemed as though very little has happened here in terms of cleanup since the earthquake, I have been noticing a lot of activity on the streets revolving around the clearing of rubble. The challenge, I suppose, is where to take the tremendous amounts of rubble that have accumulated as a result of the earthquake.

This morning we met with the mayor of Gressier, the municipality in which the House of Hope is located. He shared with us his perspectives on the greatest areas of need in Gressier, which mostly center around the needs of the many children who have been rendered homeless and/or orphans since January. As you can imagine, many are going without basic necessities of life, including food and healthcare, as well as education, and, of course, supervision and structure.

We then met at the home of a local Catholic priest who is very much engaged with the grassroots activities currently in place to assist the residents of Gressier. A few other representatives of small, grassroots initiatives joined us for the purpose of sharing information about local needs (again, the needs of children were described as the highest and most urgent priority).

We then drove to Leogane, an area that was completely devastated by the earthquake. Strangely, after driving around Port Au Prince and to and from Gressier numerous times over the past few days, it is strange but truthful to report that at a certain point, the presence of endless scenes of collapsed buildings and rubble almost seem to become part of the natural landscape. The images are so pervasive and so frequently observed that it becomes less shocking. However, Leogane once again invoked a sense of shock as we contemplated the level of destruction and spoke with local survivors who described the aftermath of the earthquake – the bodies in the streets, the mass burials, the horrible smells that hung in the air as bodies decayed in buildings, as no one could extricate them from the rubble. Again, there were so many tents, massive new tent cities that will undoubtedly be there for a long, long time, necessitating intentional planning and support to help create communities in these areas that function and thrive, at least until the residents can be rehoused. No one seems to be able to predict when that might be.

Alison and I had the opportunity to sit with Alice Barthole, the founder of the House of Hope, to get a clear sense of the structure of the orphanage and its day to day activities. As we spoke inside a sheltered area that serves as a temporary church and school as the former structures were demolished, we noticed a group of teenagers assembling who began to sing. Their voices rose in the most beautiful harmony and we couldn’t help but watch them and taker pictures and video of their beautiful voices which I will post soon. They are excited to see themselves on you tube once I get a chance to upload the videos.

Eventually, we drove back to the House of Hope, where we were greeted with such joy from the kids. There was a real difference between their response to us yesterday and today. Yesterday, it took them a long time to warm up, they were quiet and watchful and serious until we had been there for several hours. Today, they were boisterous and joyful and smiling and full of hugs. We gratefully accepted cuddles and obligingly took many photos of them which they loved seeing on our digital camera.

When I first arrived at the House of Hope yesterday, I had felt a lot of sadness. It was so painful to contemplate the fact that many of these children are in need. By the end of today, my perspective had once again transformed as I realized that the children of the House of Hope are amongst the more fortunate ones. They are housed and clothed and fed, and they are being raised in an environment that is contained within the warm and loving heart of a very special woman named Alice. They are loved, and that is apparent and beautiful to see.

We said goodbye to the children and they sung us out of the gate.

On the way home we watched the activities of the market, peppering Gachette with questions about what we were seeing and what we had observed. Gachette bought us some sugar cane to try and we all munched on it thoughtfully; sweet mouthfuls of cane juice as we drove away from the water and began climbing the streets once more to our hotel.

I hope to upload some photos tonight so my posts can be accompanied by some images. It is so important for Ve’ahavta’s supporters to know that we have been able to so closely monitor the incredible projects that we have supported in Haiti since January. There is still tremendous potential here for us to continue doing meaningful work and to affect positive change in many lives.

Until tomorrow…
Sarah

Let us take care of your Rosh Hashanah mailing.  Tax receipts are issued for all card donations.

Call our office today or click on the link to send sweet wishes to your friends, family and colleagues.

This beautiful and inspiring card features original artwork by Ve’ahavta’s Founding Director, Avrum Rosensweig.

In the past month our volunteers and staff have packed and delivered over 1,500 Kinder Kits to local partners in the GTA. Here is a testimonial from a volunteer that completed a delivery of sponsored Kinder Kits:

Click to sponsor a Kinder Kit today!

I am so excited to tell you about our first real day in Haiti. It has been so full and we have covered a lot of ground. We started with an early breakfast and in the light of the morning sun I glanced at the pool and saw what I had missed last night – the entire building adjacent to the hotel lobby and behind the area where the three of us had dinner was collapsed, its roof caved in, a strange contrast to the otherwise idyllic setting.

Gachette met us at 8am. Gachette is the country representative of Canadian Feed the Children (CFTC), a partner agency with whom Ve’ahavta has been supporting the House of Hope. Gachette is a haitian man in his forties, a father, and incredible at his job. He manages the relationships with CFTC’s four partners in Haiti. He is warm with a wonderful sense of humour and has been sharing a great deal of information about Haiti and its history over the past two days. Gachette took us to CFTC’s field office, and then took us downtown to show us the utter devastation that was left in the areas hardest hit by the earthquake. The presidential palace is destroyed, and a massive tent city has sprung up across the street. Displaced people are showering and washing up in full view – there is no privacy, they are utterly exposed. Certain infrastructure seems to have been put in place in some camps – portable toilets for example and generators, important resources though signs that the camps themselves are becoming more established, less temporary, even permanent – at least for the foreseeable future. We were left gasping and sighing as we passed by building after building that were collapsed, some partially, some reduced to complete rubble.

There is rubble everywhere. I can’t imagine what this city must have been like in the immediate aftermath of January’s disaster considering how little seems to have been done from a clean up, demolition and reconstruction point of view six months later.

We began the long drive to Gressier. We have begun to learn that poor roads and tons of traffic make traveling anywhere unpredictable. As Gachette says, “we are not so close, but we are not so far”. Eventually we made it to Gressier and saw the sign for House of Hope (HOH). We pulled into the gates and pulled up to see all 193 of the orphanage’s children assembled to welcome us. We were treated to some singing and warm greetings. The children were beautiful and sweet. It is so painful to contemplate children without parents or families. Not all the kids at HOH are orphans in the true sense of the word – many are economic orphans, or kids whose families can’t afford to take care of them. We met a few heartbreaking cases, including one boy with sad eyes who witnessed his home collapse on top of his parents, rendering him alone and living on the streets until someone brought him to Alice.

We then spent several hours meeting with Alice and one of her staff, discussing current and potential projects, and touring the grounds. We saw the vehicle we helped purchase, the sites for potential reconstruction projects, the chicken coops. We were treated to a beautiful lunch with the kids, and then to wonderful music by a troubadour group of Haitian musicians. We all listened, enjoyed, danced. Then we were treated to a show that a number of kids had prepared. Finally it was time to drive back. We received beautiful gifts of incredible paitings created by a couple of residents at the orphanage. We left, happy to know that we will be back tomorrow.

The drive home to close to two hours, the passing landscape weirdly becoming increasingly familiar – the throngs of people, the crowded markets, the piles of garbage clogging the canals and streets, the colourful tap-taps (minbuses) that are teeming with people, the rubble, the many SUVs with NGO logos, even the UN blue helmets, whom we’ve seen everywhere. Back at the hotel, we had the chance to shower and relax for a bit before meeting with Gideon Hersher, a lovely man who is the JDC rep in Haiti. It was wonderful to have dinner with him, an Israeli who has spent the past five months overseeing JDC’s projects and networking with other local NGOs. He was able share an incredible amount of information, including a few things that I didn’t know – for example, there are 21 jews currently living in Haiti, and Haiti opened up its doors to Jewish refugees after the holocaust. Gideon also gave us an update on an incredible rehab clinic we have supported which is being operated by Magen David Adom. The clinic provides free treatment and fitting and prosthetics for patients who have lost limbs in the earthquake. He was thrilled to meet us and to let us know that Ve’ahavta was one of the primary supporters of this clinic and one of the first to pledge support early on in the aftermath of the quake.

A full day, and now my eyes are closing. Time to rest. Tomorrow we look forward to meeting with the mayor of Gressier and the travelling to Leogane.

Until tomorrow,
Sarah

What a day.  Wake up in the morning in my house in Toronto, my daughter asleep beside me still.  Last minute packing before the cab arrives with Alison to take us to the airport.

It seems strange to be going to Haiti.  Neither of us had been and we had no idea what to expect. We met our colleague, Debra Kerby of CFTC at the gate, ready to start the adventure.

Landing in Port Au Prince was almost disconcerting in the sense that it was so easy, so relatively close to the hub that is the Miami airport where we had caught our connecting flight. From the air, the city looked orderly and beautiful. Our plane was full of all sorts of people – young families, NGO people, individual volunteers, members of church groups, members of relief teams, people who looked like they just might be on vacation. I thought of the people who exited their flight last January 11th, some of whom wouldn’t survive the disaster that they could never have known was looming before them.

Exiting onto the tarmac, a clean new American Airlines shuttle was waiting.  This impressed me – possibly because I am so used to flying into the Guyana airport where one just walks off the plane and into the airport.  The shuttle felt like a contradiction – a modern luxury on a tarmac where one could see boxes of humanitarian aid and large containers waiting to be cleared…vestiges I imagine from what must have been masses of supplies that arrived here in the aftermath of the disaster faster than they could be distributed.  The shuttle took us to immigration and the baggage claim, which was a scene of total chaos.  Eventually, we found our bags and wrested them off the conveyor belt, onto our baggage cart and wove through the tangle of people and suitcases and carts, emerging outdoors to a new chaotic scene of porters eager to help with our bags.  We connected very shortly after with Gachette, CFTC’s country representative, whom I had met a few months ago in Toronto, as well as Alice Barthole, the head of The House of Hope Orphanage.  It is nearly impossible to believe that Alice is an older woman – she is vivacious and so young looking, driving a gleaming new pick up truck which Ve’ahavta and CFTC helped purchase.

Getting into Gachette’s car, we began the long journey from the airport and began seeing the remnants of last winter’s earthquake immediately.  Massive tent cities erected directly across from the airports, every city park transformed into a sea of tents, laundry hanging, children weaving in and out.  Rubble still everywhere, so many buildings collapsed like fallen layer cakes, grotesquely contorted, many building sustained cracks like jagged veins in their foundations and walls. 35 seconds.  It only took 35 seconds to cause so much devastation.

Many, many people, selling shoes, jeans, underwear, fruits, plants- you name it.  Many many other people walking, minibuses careening by packed with bodies.   So much traffic, often at a standstill.

We eventually arrive in Petitionville, where our hotel is.  You can tell this is a wealthier neighbourhood, with leafy streets and funky buildings.  Our hotel, villa creole, was partially destroyed in the earthquake, the wing that was reduced to rubble cordoned off by yellow tape. The main kitchen was destroyed in the quake so now one must order in from a local restaurant for meals.  This hotel is another contradiction – beautiful yet partially destroyed, the repairs taking a long time as the hotel raises funds and works on plans for its restoration.  Meanwhile, a couple caresses in the middle of its lovely pool, two other guests taking advantage of the wireless internet on their laptops poolside.

Tomorrow will be an exciting day – we are traveling to Gressier to visit Alice and the House (HOH) of hope orphanage.  We are incredibly excited to spend time with Alice and finally meet the kids at HOH, and of course, begin to discuss plans for our continued support of HOH.  I am also looking forward to distributing the messages of hope that students of Leo Baeck created for the residents of HOH.

Until tomorrow….

Sarah

Theresa and Avrum at VSA graduation

The Ve’ahavta Street Academy (VSA) wrapped up today. Our students graduated.

VSA, is a school for those who are homeless or near homeless. Ve’ahavta (www.vehavta.org) launched it at the end of June and it has been running until today (August 19th). Essentially VSA is an environment where we taught life skills (writing, finances, health and nourishment etc.), academia and hosted fascinating speakers for our 10 students, so that they could learn and create a better life.

www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19375&Itemid=86

VSA was founded by Theresa Schrader, the winner of our 2005 Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless. www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/837267–ex-addict-puts-poverty-behind-her

She is magnificent. Theresa is a former prostitute and crack addict. She has turned her life around, after stints in jail and other such difficult times, to become a full-time student, a mommy of a beautiful little boy, a teacher, businesswoman and designer.

Designer? Yes, Theresa designed VSA and creatively nurtured it. As I said she was responsible for getting 10 students through this semester of VSA, keeping them interested and ensuring a decent education. Well she did all of that and more.

Today VSA ended. We held a graduation and gave out framed certificates and gifts. We also let our students know that they have a place in continuing education should they want it. And they do.

While I will stay away from mentioning names I will tell you that one of our students, a wonderful person who has been out of school for years will be starting at a local college in September. He began VSA with little confidence and the belief he wouldn’t make it through.

He did and while doing so brought great joy and laughter to our school.

This person I speak of was abandoned as a little boy by his mother, then his father. Abandonment at that level, at that age, can be debilitating. And in many ways his terrible fate slowed him down. We are so delighted however to state with much joy that VSA offered him the opportunity to fly – and HE DID.

Be free. Be Free.

Congratulations to all 10 students. You did it. You stuck it out, learned, asked some great questions, made silly and ensured that VSA from your end, was awesome. I so enjoyed coming down to VSA and sitting through classes and hearing your questions. As I said today at the graduation, what ever old voices you have in your head telling you are not bright or worthwhile, wish them shalom (goodbye).

I was witness to your learning and you inspired me and compelled me to study harder. Well done!! Well done and thank you.

We are thankful to all of our teachers and speakers and know that VSA would not have been the success it was without them. We are grateful to Karen Ehrlich and Paul Lindzon, board members of Ve’ahavta for their encouragement and constant presence. Thanks to our board for supporting VSA and to all of our staff who got behind it very quickly and just loved it. And of course we extend a great big hug to our donors.

There is so much more to say about VSA but I will let you read about it over time, because in September we’re going to our board to see if we might extend this program throughout the year so that we can play a role in assisting more of our community members to get off the street and into the shelter of their souls and minds. That is what education is. That is VSA.

Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee is working quickly to develop a Jewish response to the crisis through a Pakistan Flood Relief Fund. A direct supply of aid and donor-supported relief projects have commenced based on the Jewish principle of Tikun Olam by providing life-saving food, clothing, medicine, and other resources as directed by our local partners.

Pakistan is currently suffering from the most devastating flooding of recent history. At least 1,600 are dead, over one fifth of the country is under water, and more than 6,000 villages and towns destroyed. As victims brace for more flooding, up to 20 million could loose their homes. With two more weeks remaining in the Monsoon season the situation is expected to worsen in the coming days. While the scale of the disaster has already surpassed that of the recent Haitian crisis and 2004 Southeast Asian Tsunami combined, support from the international community is falling desperately short where disease prevention, clean water, safe shelter, food, political security and governmental aid are in vital demand.

Avrum Rosensweig, President of Ve’ahavta said “The suffering in Pakistan is devastating and we, the Jewish people, are therefore extending our caring and resources to help. We wish for peace between all peoples and a world of co-existence and health.”

Ve’ahavta is collecting funds to aid victims of the devastating floods in Pakistan. We are closely coordinating with the JDC, the American Joint Distribution Committee. The JDC has previously responded to victims of crisis in Pakistan in the wake of the disastrous 2005 and 2008 earthquakes. Funds will be directed to support local relief efforts immediately.

Please Support the Relief efforts in Pakistan by clicking Pakistan Flood Relief Fund or contact us by telephone: 416-964-7698 or by mail: cheques payable to Ve’ahavta-Pakistan Flood Relief 2221 Yonge Street Suite LL12 Toronto Ontario Canada M4S 2B4

Pakistan is currently suffering from the most devastating flooding of recent history. At least 1,600 are dead, over one fifth of the country is under water, and more than 6,000 villages and towns destroyed. As victims brace for more flooding, up to 20 million have been affected, with millions displaced. While the scale of the disaster has already surpassed that of the recent Haitian crisis and 2004 Southeast Asian Tsunami combined, support from the international community is falling desperately short where disease prevention, clean water, safe shelter, food, political security and governmental aid are in vital demand. Ve’ahavta and our partners the JDC are working quickly to develop a Jewish response to the crisis through a Pakistan Flood Relief Fund for direct supply of aid and donor-supported relief projects following the Jewish principle of Tikun Olam.

Donate Now

Ve’ahavta Street Academy is winding down. We are holding our graduation on Thursday. The response from the nine graduates of the inaugural Academy class was very positive. Many students are moving on to other educational programs in September, and are excited about doing so.

Ve’ahavta will hold a Ve’ahavta Street Academy Alumni Monthly meeting to continue supporting the success of our students.

Way to go, and congratulations to our nine graduates. All the best!

Our obligation to do our part to repair the world means we need to look out for those not only in faraway places but also those who are part of our community.

Recently I spent an evening with the Ve’ahavta Homeless Outreach Van along with my wife and twelve year old son. There is no obvious or easy solution to the problem of homelessness. Well-informed and well-intentioned people may have different perspectives as to how to respond to circumstances that lead people to live on the streets. Public policies, social backgrounds, health issues and expectations of personal responsibility both inform and reflect how we respond to homelessness.

But while we continue to try to identify the best way for a community to respond to the problems of homelessness, there are many people on the street who have immediate and sometimes urgent needs. The needs may vary but one that is common to all is the need to not be forgotten. The Ve’ahavta Homeless Outreach Van provided warmth and support in both tangible and intangible ways. A fresh pair of socks, a bottle of water, some helpful information, a sympathetic ear – this is some of what the Outreach Van had to offer. The driver of the Outreach Van, Perry, had obviously earned the trust and respect of many of the people the van encountered. It was clear that many were pleased to see him not only to receive something specific but also to know that here was another person who cared about their well being.

Generally speaking the responses from those who received what Ve’ahavta had to offer were
underpinned by soft spoken but profound expressions of gratitude. Such quiet dignity reinforced the most important and enduring part of the effort- that though circumstances can lead to people finding themselves in starkly different situations, the recognition of our common humanity with its corresponding obligations is something that should not fade into the background.

The Ve’ahavta Homeless Outreach Van helps ensure that some who are facing difficult
circumstances do not fade into the background.

- Randy Hahn, MJRH Volunteer

Mike Riley, a Ve’ahavta Street Academy student, and other share their struggle for financial independence.

Read the article online: Fix welfare rules, panel urges province by Laurie Monsebraaten, Social Justice Reporter, The Toronto Star

Click here to download the PDF.

The idea for this article started with a simple enough question. “Do you have any understanding of the Jewish community?” Pretty Basic. But for me, the question unravels many of the reasons why I’ve always cultivated the relationships I have with my Jewish friends, why I love the environment I work in as well as the people in it, and why I feel as if my unique role in the machinery of how Ve’ahavta operates is one that is supported and encouraged by my colleagues and the inspiring group of individuals that walk through our door on a daily basis.

Growing up, the majority of my family friends were Jewish and I had the unique perspective of being an outsider living within a community that was extremely inclusive and never treated me as if I were any different from them. However, this “difference” was implicit in all of my observations as I paid close attention to how those related in my world (as a WASP – white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) and that of the world I’d had the privilege of being adopted into.

What I saw was a tight-knit community of incredibly supportive and encouraging people in relation to others within their group. Families cultivated both the individual relationships within them as well as the need to function and enjoy each other as a cohesive unit. I saw parents who were constantly encouraging their children rather than putting them down, and much of the time seeing their own through a lens of “greatness”—greatness of what they could be, what they were going to be, and what they already were. While competition no doubt plays a role in all families, it seemed to be less spiteful and jealous than the competition I witnessed among the non-Jewish families that I knew. The jealousies were equalized by a healthy sense of pride and confidence, both towards each other and within.

Above all, the feature I gravitated towards most, that perhaps was most striking in its stark opposition to the dynamics at play in the outside world, was the sense that the capitalistic sentiment of selfishness, of greed and self-interest, of taking what you can from others in an effort to get ahead that I found so frustrating and disappointing, was not something that had a place in this definition of “Jewishness” that I was assembling. Seeing the possibility that people could be extremely successful while not having to limit relationships or the ability of others to achieve the same and rather, INCLUDE others in one’s circle in the acquisition of affluence, together, was extremely helpful and groundbreaking in curbing my cynicism of the cold world that lay ahead of me.

The secret, it seemed, that my world was missing, the secret that I witnessed amongst the Jewish families around me was this: When you share with others a part of what you have, that which remains will multiply and grow. The more you share, the more you will have.”^[i]

I saw families that didn’t communicate with one another, that seemed to live like strangers under the same roof; you could feel the tension and disconnect within those familial relationships; you could see the inherent distrust amongst people within each other’s circle, the jealousy, the envy, the criticism of other people’s successes. I always felt some sort of common, unspoken theme of fear and insecurity that navigated decisions in life based on the presumption that if you don’t grab whatever you can, someone else will and there will be nothing left over for you. I found that quality so sad and limiting, so cynical and negative. I knew that that wasn’t and would never be me; that I could never look at the world with such a harsh and unforgiving eye. Nor would I ever want to live in world premised on a concept so lonely and isolating.

That world belonged to a more jaded, solipsistic individual version of myself that I would never be. I wanted something more to believe in, something more hopeful that would propel me into the world with purpose and motivation. And then I’d look at this other group of people, and I found what I could only describe as the “soul” of a community whose heartbeat has a pulse that was tangible and seemed to fill in all those holes that had left me with a feeling of societal emptiness. This energy rooted in the duality of explosive relationships and staunch displays of love and affection was infectious.

While there certainly was no lack of conflict or struggle, the secret they’d found ahead of the curve is that abundance and success can be had by all and that generosity does not leave one with less than the other; giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin. The spirit of giving, of supporting and loving one other has the ultimate reward of multiplying exponentially for everyone involved. As it starts with one and gets passed onto another, the group as a whole gets lifted up. I wanted to be a part of that. I felt at home with that. I felt hopeful about the world if it could be more like that. It never occurred to me that I would feel this gravitational pull so strongly. Upon reflection now, it does seem slightly serendipitous that I would end up working in a place where I felt at home amongst the same people who provided me with many of the lessons from my childhood that inspired my professional direction. And so, here I am.

Whenever I am walking behind someone and the tag on the back of their shirt is hanging out, I gently tap them on the shoulder and let them know, then tuck the tag inside. Every person has thanked me and smiled, and in fact, one person was so grateful, she hugged me, saying she was going to a job interview!

- Terri, posted via Facebook

Have you witnessed an act of Goodness? Did you share one yourself? Please share it with us by replying to this post.

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An Archive of Goodness on Facebook

Follow @GoodnessArchive on Twitter

Even though it seems not to be politically correct these days, I try to celebrate the birthdays of everyone in the office – either publicly (because we are a small and close-knit bunch) or privately with a card and a whispered “Happy Birthday”. Friends and family get cards (both ecards from www.care2.com and the Hallmark kind) and phone calls. It’s my way of letting them know that I bless the day they were born.

- Terri, posted via Facebook

Have you witnessed an act of Goodness? Did you share one yourself? Please share it with us by replying to this post.

* * *

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Our office keeps bottled water in the fridge. When we have a hot day (and we’ve had alot of hot days this summer), I offer the person who delivers our mail “a cold one”. It’s always received gratefully and with a smile.

- Terri, posted via Facebook

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When I’m out walking in the park I collect garbage and carry it out with me. I figure that people are less likely to drop their waste if they see a clean park.

- Jane, posted via Facebook

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When you are online and have a minute to spare take a look at www.thenonprofits.com, the Free Donations Directory.

You may remember The Hunger Site the Breast Cancer Site or the Rainforest Site – a group of websites that collect money from their sponsors every time you click. That’s all it takes… a few seconds to click and you can help support a variety of causes.

Visit www.thenonprofits.com to help feed children (and adults) and provide relief to those in need worldwide, support an environmental initiative, give funds to cancer research and more – all at no cost to you!

Take care,
Vanessa

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I was reading to my daughter, and came across a story that had been adapted from a poem by Randy Poole titled “The Difference He Made.” Here’s how the story went.

One morning, while walking down a quiet beach, a boy saw an old man picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. The boy watched in wonder as the old man again and again threw the starfish from the sand to the water.

He asked, “Old man, why do you spend so much energy doing what seems to be a waste of time?” The old man explained that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun.

“But there must be thousands of beaches and millions of starfish!” said the boy. “How can you make any difference?”

The old man looked down at the starfish in his hand, and as he threw it to the safety of the ocean, he said, “I make a difference to this one.”

What I like most of this tale is that it speaks directly to how one person, through even the smallest actions, can indeed make a difference.

Take care,
Vanessa

I have come to realize that even though one may not have money, shelter or even more than a few pairs of clothes, one does have a heart. And in that heart flows the same blood as I. A few years ago, I traveled to Turkey where I met some amazing friends. They lived in places where the stairs were ready to cave in at any time. Most of them ate one meal a day, if that, and slept in a room with 20 other guys with no blankets in the winter. Some days they did not earn anything, but yet they always spent their last cent buying me a cup of Apple Tea, providing me with warmth and friendship.

In their eyes, I was their big sister and their love and compassion towards me showed me that one must look past what is on the outside to see how beautiful and precious one is and that the Almighty really does reside in all of us no matter what circumstances he presently faces.

- Sangita Patel, MJRH volunteer

We were surprised to have such intelligent, interesting conversations with some of these people. Recently, we were stopped at a light at one of the van stop locations, and began to chat with one of the van’s clientele about meeting him the previous week. It was amazing to be able to interact instead of just “ignore”. Made us feel better about the world and it was equalizing somehow.

- Rachel Yaegar, MJRH volunteer

I spent an hour speaking to a lawyer about someone who is awaiting trial in prison. I am making arrangements with the lawyer to provide this person with clothes for court and money for what he needs in jail.

- Theresa

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I work with people in prison, a population not normally associated with “goodness”. Pete, someone I work with who has been inside for many years, is an amazing visual artist. He gives a lot of his paintings and drawings to non-profit community agencies to be used as fundraising tools, and doesn’t ask for a penny in return. The agencies that I work for, and many others, have benefited from his generosity time and time again.

He also recently won an award from Human Rights Watch for his tireless work as a peer counselor, educating other prisoners about HIV prevention and harm reduction, and fighting to ensure that people inside receive adequate health care.

Pete, and other people that I work with, are a constant reminder to me that goodness can be found everywhere, and that we all, regardless of our circumstances, have the capacity to change.

- Joan, posted via Facebook

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Date of Commencement: October 2010

Date of Completion: June 2011

Position Description:

• Serve as Ve’ahavta liaison to the project partners and to the volunteers
• Be present each week at the homework club from beginning to end (approximately 2 hrs/week)
• Transport donated supplies from Ve’ahavta to homework club as needed
• Provide on-site orientation for new Ve’ahavta volunteers who join program late
• Provide project supervisor with incident reports should an incident occur on site or with a volunteer during program
• Inform project supervisor and volunteers of homework club cancellations due to civic or religious holidays, elections, P.A. days, etc.
• Record attendance on a monthly basis and report any volunteers who do not attend the program for the “two Mondays per month” requirement
• Submit two summary reports, one per semester outlining program statistics, successes, challenges, recommendations for future
• Help plan end of term parties

Contact:

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact volunteerinfo@veahavta.org or 416-964-7698 ext. 16

The Lita and Mikey Ledbury Homework Club

Commitment: 3.5 hrs/week beginning October 2010 and ending June 2011

Position Description:

• Provide on site supervision for learners who are students at Ledbury Park Elementary and Middle School and participants in the Lita and Mikey Ledbury Homework Club from 3:30 pm until 6 pm each Wednesday.
• Actively encourage students to participate in physical activity (e.g. sports activities) or educational activities or art/creative projects.
• Purchase healthy snacks for the students each week (this expense to be reimbursed by Ve’ahavta)

Contact:

If you are interested in volunteering, please contact volunteerinfo@veahavta.org or 416-964-7698 ext. 16

At the beginning of May, Matthew, a twelve year old boy who is celebrating his Bar Mitzvah this October, came up with the idea to collect 1,800 pair of socks to donate to homeless people all over Toronto. He chose that number because in Judaism the number 18 represents chai, or life, and he wanted to give one pair of socks to 1,800 homeless people to make sure that their life is just a tiny bit better. In just six weeks Matthew collected over 2,000 pairs of socks that will be distributed through our MJRH van to the homeless.

Yasher Koach, Great Job Matthew! You are an inspiration to all!

Yesterday, standing in line at the supermarket, I helped the people in front of me pay their bill as they were short of cash. They actually were removing groceries that they wanted to buy from their bags so they could get down to the amount of cash they had available.

- Arieh

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For the last 5 years, there has been a shelf in my kitchen cupboard labeled “Food Bank Shelf” and whenever I shop for groceries, I try to pick up an item or two to add to the shelf. I try to mix and match (ie: pasta and a can/jar of sauce, peanut butter and jam or honey, Kraft Dinner and canned milk, bottles/boxes of baby food). While the original idea was to have these items available for the various food drives, the shelf fills up quite quickly and the items are usually bagged and taken to the food bins at my local grocery store more often than the Food Bank calls for public assistance.

As well, I also do this when I buy cat food, and then donate this to Urban Cat Relief (who does foster and rescue of cats). They always need it.

- Terri

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City of Beit Shemesh
1 Av 5770
Hazon Yeshayah and Ve’Ahavta Canada

Greetings:
RE: A Special Thank You

It is our privilege to express to your organizations our most heartfelt appreciation for the very important project “Backpack for every Child”.  Because of this blessed initiative many disadvantaged students will be able to begin the new school year with the proper school equipment. These backpacks will also give these students a wonderful feeling and better self-confidence towards their studies in the new year and will contribute to their continued success in their studies.

You should be blessed from Heaven.

Yours truly,
Moshe Avutebol

Mayor, Beit Shemesh
Interim Head of the Local Authority
City of Jerusalem

15 July 2010
Mr. Avraham Israel, E.D.
Hazon Yeshayah
Jerusalem

Dear Sir:
RE: Help to Disadvantaged Children

It is my privilege to thank your organization for its contribution of 180 backpacks for disadvantaged children. These wonderful backpacks were distributed by social workers to families who are in very difficult economic circumstances (Level A, which is the lowest).  The children that received these backpacks will now be able to begin the new school year in September with great joy.

In addition, please pass on my good wishes and thanks to Ve’ahavta Canada, your partner in this endeavour. Also, I would be remiss if I did not thank Mr. David Simon who organized this distribution in such an efficient and quick manner.

Yours truly,
Sarah Sharon

Manager,
Resource Development

Today Ron Maclean spoke to our students and some board members, at the Veahavta Street Academy (VSA).

He spoke for two hours drawing upon stories from his humble beginnings, the 26 Stanley Cups he has covered, the Olympics he has attended and his close relationship with Don Cherry.

He told us about the affect Victor Frankl’s ‘Search for Meaning’ had on his life, as did the Zamboni drivers he knows, announcers, hockey players and the CBC staff.

He shared with us short vignettes about Bobby Orr who comforted him as he was about to go to air, having just learned Rose Cherry was on her deathbed.

Hockey is Canada’s cultural golden vessel and Ron Maclean is the emperor. While Don Cherry, another Canadian icon, projects his celebrity as a diva of sorts, Ron Maclean brings his royalty to the street.

And when he told us about one of his first NHL interviews, with the very intimidating Harold Ballard, we could almost sense the sweat rolling down his face, still a young guy from Red Deer, as the Leaf owner went on a tirade about the evils of bringing a Russian (’Communist’) team to Canada.

Ron is real and compassionate, to the extent that he wrote his home number on the chalkboard for the VSA students – individuals who are homeless or near homeless – should they ever need help.

He is a storyteller,  an archivist of Canadian history and an absolute pleasure to listen to.

Next time you watch Hockey Night in Canada, and Coaches Corner, consider that the humbly dressed man you are listening to gave of his time one summer day to a Jewish Street Academy,  to enhance the lives of a few Canadians who have faced some very serious challenges in life – those whom we call the homeless.

I was walking with my daughter in her stroller when I heard a dull, loud thud on the road just ahead of us. I looked up to see that a car had turned left into oncoming traffic and had struck another vehicle.

The damage looked to be superficial but both drivers were very shaken. They were two moms, one with her young daughter in a car seat in the back, and the other was pregnant.

Other cars that had witnessed the collision either drove by and ignored the situation or honked and waved their hands angrily. I guess the inconvenience of having to drive around the two cars was clouding their vision.

One young man pulled over to help. He moved both women and the child off of the road and into his car. He proceeded to calm everyone down and got the women to make phone calls to their families while they waited for the police to arrive.

I’m sure that both mothers, and their families, are extremely grateful for this stranger stopping to help them.

Take care,
Vanessa

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Read the article online: Ex-addict puts poverty behind her by Laurie Monsebraaten, Social Justice Reporter, The Toronto Star

Click here to download the PDF.

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s already time to return home. As I reflect on the past week, I have a lot of mixed emotions about my time in Haiti. I am first and foremost so glad and honored that I could participate in this mission with such a phenomenal and dedicated group of doctors and nurses. They are truly such compassionate and caring people, and have such a love for their craft. I am also eager to return home, especially to all the modern day comforts I’ve grown so accustomed to. However, I am also leaving with a tremendous feeling of guilt, as the patients we treated and the people we saw don’t have the luxury of leaving their horrible living conditions.

As one of the members of our team, Dr. Lee Ann Gallant so eloquently put it, “It is hard to describe to others what we saw and experienced in Haiti. The words do not give a sense of the people, hardship, anxiety, hopelessness and frustration that we were exposed to. We feel the connection to our fellow JNF ers in ways that are indescribable to others.”

Many times throughout the week, we were frustrated with our lack of resources and ability to give the full service of care that many of the patients needed. However, I think that just our presence and our desire to help them gave them a sense of hope, just to know that there are people who do truly care and want to help improve their situation. The earthquake happened four months ago, and to many that is considered “old news”, and I think it’s important for the people of Haiti to know that they are not forgotten.

Another thing I have been reflecting on is the spirit of the Haitian people. Although they’ve been through a horrendous ordeal and are still suffering the effects with no basic medical care, no clean water, no houses, and really no structure or order to their daily lives, they are fiercely proud of who they are and what they stand for.

I have every intention of continuing my support for the country of Haiti and it’s people. And I am truly indebted to the Jewish Renaissance Foundation for allowing me to participate in such a great and eye opening experience.

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Apparently it’s the beginning of rainy season because it rained all night. The good news was the sound of the pounding rain against the tent managed to drown out the sounds of the roosters and other random animals. The bad news was that the rain brought more moisture, which, in turn, brought more mosquitoes. Yuck!

Today is our final day at Help Hospital and it was another hot, busy, crazy day. But, it was definitely worthwhile! Again, our better organization made the day run even smoother than the last. At the end of day, we gave the pharmacy all of our left over
medications, dressings, etc. and it is looking more like a pharmacy should, but what happens when these run out? How will they get more medications?

These are questions that run through my mind throughout our stay. I think the services we are providing are great, but what’s going to happen two weeks from now? Is there going to be any follow-up for these patients? Sadly, I know it is not likely, which is why I again feel as though our week-long medical mission is just a single drop in an ocean of what needs to happen for the Haitian people.

When we return to the compound, we have a debriefing with the nursing students from hospital. We thank them for all of their help and for being so welcoming to us. We are officially exhausted! We pack up all of our luggage and prepare to head to Port-au-Prince for the night so we will be closer to the airport for our flight tomorrow.

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Another day at Help Hospital, and it’s wonderful to see that we’re even more organized than the last time. We’re turning into a well-oiled machine! A few more members returned home this morning, so we have less pairs of hands to help. Our team now consists of 10 people including two nurses, three family practice doctors, two pediatricians, an optometrist, his son and myself. I, personally, am helping out the optometrist today, as there are an overwhelming number of patients who need eye examinations.

I am so frustrated by my lack of French and Creole knowledge!!! The nursing students are very helpful, and there are a few interpreters that are there to assist us, but it’s still frustrating to not be able to communicate, and, unfortunately, my limited Spanish is getting me nowhere! We again worked all day in the 100 degree weather and by the end of the day we are exhausted. I can honestly say I have never in my life sweat as much as I have on this trip. We are all losing electrolytes at an alarming rate!

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

My half of the group went to do some touring and a get a better idea of the damage that was done to Haiti, especially the central historic area of Port-au-Prince where the Legislative Palace and the Presidential Palace are located, as those buildings were also destroyed. The other half of the group, “the optometry group”, went to a church to fit residents with glasses.

Throughout our travels around Port-au-Prince, I am absolutely astounded that people actually live there. The traffic is a nightmare due to the destruction of the roads, and there does not seem to be any regulation of the traffic. In addition, the heat and humidity do not let up at all. The sewers are freely running with no covers, and again, the piles of garbage that are as high as sand dunes are everywhere. The smell alone is enough to make you pass out. It’s so sad and revolting that people live amongst the filth, and there are actually food vendors along the streets selling food alongside the piles of trash.

After our excursion to Port-au-Prince, we headed back to Leogane to attend the weekly meeting at the United Nations compound of all the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the area that is conducted by the World Health Organization. One of the things that was so shocking to those of us who attended the meeting, was the lack of communication amongst all of these organizations. Even to have a listing of all the hospitals and clinics in Leogane with their hours and services that they are able to provide would be helpful to everyone, especially since we’re all their for the same goal. Many of us left the meeting feeling frustrated and disappointed that there isn’t more collusion amongst the medical providers. We did, however, manage to make a list for ourselves that we can pass on to the next JRF mission group which will help them immensely if they find they would like to make referrals.

Another great thing that happened after the meeting is one of the women from another clinic, The Christianville Clinic, needed to unload all types of medications and vitamins, and we were more than happy to have her unload all of those boxes on us! We’re so excited to have Pedialyte and calcium supplements for our patients tomorrow!

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Four of our team members left for home in the early morning hours. Unfortunately, due to the extreme heat, their health was a major concern and they needed to return home for their own safety.

The second day at the hospital is not much different than the first…there are hundreds of people waiting outside for our arrival. Today, however, we have decided to split up the hospital space in a more productive and organized way. We have also come up with a game plan for triaging patients and directing them to the correct “station” such as pediatrics, family practice, OB/GYN, optometry, pharmacy, etc… We again managed to see about 500 patients, and, again, we had very limited supplies and medications.

However, it seemed as though the majority of patients we saw were suffering mentally and emotionally from the trauma they and their families sustained, and they really just wanted someone to talk and a compassionate ear to listen. None of these patients received any type of therapy for the horrific experience that they survived. It was truly a heartbreaking sight. And, as I’ve said before, it was a frustrating situation for us as healthcare providers to not be able to meet those needs.

After the busy day at the hospital, a few of us decided to walk over to the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), as their compound was a five-minute walk from our compound. We had a nice conversation with their head medical care coordinator who informed us of the services their facilities are able to provide in the area. We were thrilled to learn that we can refer patients with OB/GYN issues and mental health problems to their compound, as well as patients requiring surgery to St. Croix Hospital with which they are affiliated. It was somewhat of a relief to know that there are facilities where we can refer patients who need a higher level of care than we are able to provide at Help Hospital.

A bunch of us went out for some Haitian beer, Prestige, at one of the only still-standing restaurants. After we returned to our compound, we all retired to our tents and tried to get in as much sleep before the regular 3 am Rooster Extravaganza!

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

After all of us woke, showered, and had a bite to eat, we decided to go through the medications and dressings that we brought and create some sort of organization so we wouldn’t be so overwhelmed at the hospital.

Upon our arrival to the hospital, we were shocked to see hundreds of people waiting outside the front doors. Apparently word got out that a medical team from the United States and Canada would be providing medical examinations over the next week. Needless to say, the atmosphere was nothing less than pure chaos.

The clinic was over 100 degrees at all times, with no fans or any type of breeze. Because we weren’t sure what to expect, there was very little organization to how the patients would be seen and in what order. This is something we would work on over the next few days. We saw patients with all types of ailments from children with ringworm, to adults with hernias, to various gynecologic problems. Almost every patient that was seen had an eye exam and glasses were given out to those who needed them.

We saw lots of children who lost their parents in the earthquake, and many adults who lost children and other family members in the disaster. Most of the patients we saw had either post-traumatic stress disorder and/or depression, but there was very little we could do as far as mental health. This would be one of our many frustrations while working at the hospital. Our facility was so basic, and our abilities to perform full examinations were so limited, that many of us were left feeling extremely frustrated. Although we knew were helping to an extent it felt as though all we could provide was “a drop in a bucket” of what really needed to be done in terms of medical care. Some of the patients we saw needed surgery of one kind or another, and we had no clue as to where we could refer them. If a patient needed a medication that was not in our arsenal, we would provide him/her with a prescription for the local pharmacy, only to have them return to us saying that they couldn’t afford the medication.

One interesting thing that we all noticed is that none of the patients referred to the earthquake as “the earthquake”, they all refer to it as “the event” and give timelines using “before the event” and “after the event”.

Throughout or stay in Haiti, there was no evidence of any local government and seemingly no structure to the lives of Haiti’s residents. What’s the plan for this country and its people?

Upon our arrival home from the clinic that evening, we decided to all sit down and
discuss how we could organize tomorrow’s caseload better and more efficiently. We also had the opportunity to give our input for the next medical mission through the JRF, as far as what medications and equipment should be brought to provide more thorough medical care.

Ve’ahavta sent two volunteers, Drs. Lee Ann and Tsvi Gallant, on a mission to Haiti run by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Corps. The following is an excerpt from a trip diary by Dr. Alona Yacobovsky, physical therapist and YAD Social Co-Chair, who flew with the medical team to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Sunday, April 25th
Newark Airport, Newark, NJ 3:45 am

I can’t believe I am going to be leaving for Haiti in a little over two hours. I’m anxious, but excited to meet the people from the Jewish Renaissance Foundation with whom I’ll be embarking on this medical mission. Where will be working? Where will be sleeping? What will the conditions be like? All of these questions are swirling around in my mind as I’ve never been in a third world country, or had the opportunity to participate in a medical mission.

4:00 am: I see two doctors shaking hands and introducing themselves, so I introduce myself to them as well. Over the next hour, other members of our 19-person group arrive at the American Airlines terminal. Many members of our team brought multiple bags filled with medications, vitamins, and medical equipment. Introductions are made and bags are checked, and off we go to gate.

11:00 am: We’ve finally landed in Port-au-Prince. The first thing I notice when we disembark is the stifling heat and humidity. When we finally get to baggage claim, there is no order whatsoever. Amidst the chaos, each one of us manages to find our luggage. But then we hit a snag… Dr. Paul Berman has been gracious enough to bring thousands of glasses to give to the patients we’d be seeing, and the customs officials wanted to charge a duty tax for the glasses, as well as the medications we hauled from NJ. Thankfully, one of the members of our team, Dr. Daniel Desrivieres, who speaks Creole, was able to convince the officials to allow us to leave the airport, with all of our luggage. Unfortunately, we then had to wait two hours in the Haitian heat for our bus to arrive to take us to our destination, Leogane.

Leogane is a coastal city that is 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince. Due to the poor condition of the roads, it took us two hours to get to our compound. Leogane is inhabited by about 60,000 people, with 95% of buildings flattened and up to 30,000 killed in the earthquake. The bus ride was bumpy, hot, and uncomfortable. Throughout the bus ride, we passed tent city after tent city with seemingly no end in sight. Garbage was strewn throughout the streets with humongous burning piles of trash that left a nasty stench in the air. Random animals such as pigs and goats were roaming around the piles of trash looking for something to eat. It is hard to put into words the smells that came from the garbage piles, but even more shocking to me was that people were LIVING a few feet from the steaming piles of trash, breathing in the noxious fumes day in and day out.

On our way to the compound we made a stop at the Help Hospital and Nursing School. We would be spending the next week there at a makeshift hospital providing medical care to residents of Leogane and the outlying cities. The makeshift hospital is made up of a plywood shed with a steel roof, while tarps and tents outside provide shelter over hospital beds. We are told that during the earthquake, 10 staff members of the hospital lost their lives. Upon our arrival a group of nursing students welcomed the head honcho on our mission, Dr. Goldsmith, with a bouquet of flowers, and they sang us a song welcoming us to Haiti. We also got a quick peek of the pharmacy that held meager amounts of medications. We were also informed that on any typical day, the hospital sees maybe 20 patients.

After our stop at the hospital, we made our way to our compound, about a 7-10 minute drive from the hospital. Upon our arrival, we enter what appears to be a house, but the roof is fairly nonexistent. We are also told at that time that although there are some buildings and houses that are still standing, people are so afraid of aftershocks and another deadly earthquake, nobody wants to sleep inside. We discover that there are two working toilets and a single shower, which I am so thankful for. Although we have to share the shower amongst the 19 of us, we’ll make it work! The shower has minimal water pressure and only puts out cold water, but we are all looking forward to cold showers due to the sweltering heat.

Once we all had a moment to sit and take it all in, the mosquitoes began their never ending attack. We all immediately retrieved our bottles of bug spray and deet, and sprayed any exposed skin. Eventually all of the tents were pitched and we went to work on blowing up all of the air mattresses. It is at this point that my only thought was “What did I get myself into? I wasn’t prepared for this!” But then I reminded myself that I was only living through this for a week. For most Haitians affected by the earthquake, this is their reality. Eventually we all settled into our tents for the night and prepared ourselves for the following day. We were concerned that we wouldn’t have enough work for all of us at the hospital, as we were told to only expect 20 patients a day…but we would be very wrong!!!

The barbecue dinner was fantastic. It was the biggest turnout Ve’ahavta has had since we started doing the dinners. We had well over 120 people to serve. Jack Stern and his family and friends were absolutely amazing. Jack insisted on doing the barbecuing and he had a blast (albeit he was VERY exhausted after cooking 200+ burgers and hotdogs).

Members at the hall let me know that they have not had a barbecue that big or that full of food in years.  I am very happy it went seamlessly. We have another dinner planned for next Sunday.

Thanks!

Eric Cisterna
Outreach Initiatives Co-Ordinator

So – there’s this homeless guy in need of size 10 1/2 shoes because his are falling apart and wouldn’tcha know that some Ve’ahavta employee went to Value Village and found a pair of runners in that size. Needless to say, Big John is a happy fella.

- Terri, posted via Facebook

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While I was in Israel recently, I fell ill with sunstroke. For 24 hours I was pretty uncomfortable and as you know being away from home, and being sick, is not pleasant. I was staying in a three-star hotel where they did not have room service. Ugh!

When the front desk got word I was not feeling well (from my travel companion, Kirill) the fellow there called me and said, “I understand you are not feeling well, so I’ll send you up a cup of tea.”

I was so touched by his actions and it helped me feel a bit better for a while. He also gave me insight into what hospitality means, particularly in Israel and the Middle East. I look forward to returning…not getting sick…but being exposed to folks with such generosity of spirit.

- Avrum, posted via discussion board comment

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This week I want to tell you about a remarkable man. He is extremely intelligent, and remarkably evolved. He is one of our clients, and he lives in a park. His name is Sid.

For the longest time, Sid would only have brief interaction with me. Then, about 6 months into my employment with Ve’ahavta, he started speaking. The conversation soon turned to my Judaism (or the failure of it for me), and the Torah. It turns out that Sid is a Kabbalist. He has read a fair bit of the commentary of Rashi and Rambam, and other Jewish scholars. What he has told me about the Kabbalist interpretation of the Torah, at the level he is at, has rejuvenated my interest in my religion.

To be brief, I had a very expensive private school Hebrew education, but the religious aspect of it left me completely cold. As a teenager and into my 30s, I was a Richard Dawkins-esque atheist. As I learned what little I knew about psychology, ethics and philosophy, I was convinced that the road to peace, harmony, and freedom from judgment lay in the domain of secular thinking.

As I later came to develop my faith in God, I suspected that the essences of Judaism, and the essences of Christianity, Islam, and all other faiths are remarkably similar and beneficial, but that it is the people who teach and practice these religions that created the problems I saw. One problem was with people who had beliefs that were harsh, restrictive, or judgmental of others. The problem is that they seemed to have not thoroughly examined the source and justification for their beliefs, or were too willing to accept an answer by rote, from people who themselves had not really thought deeply about it. I saw this as unethical, and believed then as I do now that such people let themselves off too easy. I did have faith at this point, as I said, and was prepared to leave it at that. I didn’t see a way to infuse the practice with the essence. Until I met Sid.

I’ll give you two examples of common Jewish thinking and practice (out of many) that stood as examples of why I had trouble with Judaism (and other religions). I’ll contrast that with an alternate view, with what I now believe is the essential Jewish view, which Sid has imparted to me. This is the view that is in keeping with my understanding of what a benevolent, loving God would create and want.

The first one: gender equality. For the longest time, women were not allowed to study or teach the Torah. Though this has changed a lot in 25 years, my understanding was that that was a result of the creation of breakaway sects of Judaism, and that in the main women were still prohibited from teaching Torah.

Sid told me about a passage where God says to Abraham, “In everything you do, listen to your wife Sarah”.  As Sid tells it, the Kabbalist interpretation of that sentence is that it implies that Sarah has intelligent things to say, and further, that she has the right to educate herself  so that she develops these intelligent things to say. According to the Kabbalah, there is no reason why women shouldn’t be teaching Torah.

The other example is of homosexuality. Many of the Jews I ask think it is a sin to practice homosexuality, according to their view of Judaism. My view, after I came to believe in God, was that He wouldn’t create a creature and then deny it the right to act within its nature. He wouldn’t create something only to have it suffer. The Jewish view was not in keeping with my view of how God would be.

Apparently, the seed of the offending belief is the sentence, “Man should not lay down with another man as he would a woman”.

Sid explains that according to the Kabbalah there is no homosexuality. What we see as homosexuality is really a situation where one of the couple is a woman’s soul in a man’s body (or a man’s soul in a woman’s body). On the surface we have homosexuality, but the surface isn’t really where the action is. As far as souls are concerned, homosexuals have every right to proceed as they would, at least according to this interpretation.

All of a sudden, I have been introduced to a Judaism that is inclusive and consummately peaceful. This, I am inclined to believe, is the truest meaning of the Torah This is indeed in keeping with what I believe is God’s nature, and is also in keeping with the best secular psychology that I know. The fact that these essences are so in tune points out to me that this is the real truth. Finally I can be a Jew.

As an aside, I think the problem with the way religions of all types are practiced is that it leads to people following people, without considering the facts in front of them. Some feel it is taboo to disagree with their teachers, rabbis, or even parents. However, God gave us a mind, with the intention that we use it. Can anyone really think God would create a homosexual and then not let him/her practice it? If that’s what a rabbi says, does that make it more reasonable? Why don’t more people question the things they’re told rather than accepting them as rote, and passing it down so that the next generation can accept it as rote? This was my beef with Judaism and the people who taught it to me. It was my problem with all faiths. I am relieved to know that it was just the practice, and not the policy.

And what a gift, to be shown a way into the beauty of my own religion by a Christian-born man from 11000 miles away. By a man living in a park.

- Perry Howell, Outreach Worker

Ve’ahavta Israel is proud to announce the landing and distribution of Kinder Kits in our Homeland, Israel.

This past Wednesday morning Avrum and Kirill, who were in Israel at the time, received word that the 3,000 Kinder Kits would be made available to hand out to impoverished children living across Israel through our partners, Hazon Yeshaya and Bialek Rogozin School in Tel Aviv.

Kinder Kits are backpacks with educational materials such as pencils, pens, notebooks, rulers, crayons etc.

Hazon Yeshaya is a well established non-profit with national distribution centers and soup kitchens across Israel.

Israel is a young nation – 2.3 million out of a population of 7 million range from birth to 18 yrs old.
35% of those children live under the poverty line.

Please give to next years Israel Kinder Kit campaign.

Our Aim for Kit Distribution in 2011 is to send 7,000 kits to Israel.

Make a gift by by clicking here:
https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/Donate.aspx?EventID=38278&LangPref=en-CA/

We are thankful to the entire Jewish community and all our friends across Canada that were involved in donating and assembling these Kinder Kits.

For more information on how you can help support the Kinder Kit Project, please contact Josh Hacker at 416-964-7698 x.21 or josh.hacker@veahavta.org

When I went to Canadian Blood Services yesterday, I thought I would be donating just platelets (#103) but they needed plasma, so what the heck, what’s a few more blood cells when the body just makes ‘em up again within 24 hours.

- Terri, posted via Facebook

* * *

An Archive of Goodness on Facebook

Follow @GoodnessArchive on Twitte

I was outside on garbage day trying to move two green bins, a large garbage bin and three yard waste containers up to the side of the house. I had a two-year-old in tow and was trying to keep her away from the road while keeping an eye on the newborn that was fussing in the baby carrier. Needless to say, I had limited mobility and this usually quick task was taking quite a while.

A Purolator truck was slowly making it’s way down the road and pulled over. The delivery man picked up my bins and asked me where I wanted them. I just stared at him for a second…I was so confused… He helped me with everything and showed me a photo of his grandchildren who were about the same age as my girls. He said that he misses them and can’t spend much time with them but hopes that somebody is there to help his daughter out sometimes. He then looked at the address and laughed – he went back to his truck and got a parcel for me. I thanked him and told him that he had made my month (not because of the parcel).

This one small act by a total stranger made me feel less alone that day.

Take care,
Vanessa

Our goal is to gather 1000 acts of tikun olam by the end of the year. In the long run we hope to set a world record of one million.

How you can help:

• Have you witnessed a good or healing act that you would like to share? Please add a comment below to post it to the archive. You can respond to any of the blog entries too!
• If you are a Facebook or Twitter user please connect with the Archive and share it with your network.

An Archive of Goodness also has some real estate on Facebook and Twitter: @GoodnessArchive and An Archive of Goodness Facebook page

Goodness is quiet. Let’s turn up the volume on Goodness!

An Archive of Goodness is memory book of valuable Tikun Olam experiences that will be a constant reminder of our ability to do goodness as a reflection of human kind.

Ve’ahavta’s bloggers have taken up the challenge of archiving goodness, kindness, and healing the world and will reflect on what this means to them. We encourage you to take up the challenge, to post your thoughts and to post your acts of goodness or witnessed goodness.

Care to take the Archive Challenge? Post your response here to start sharing today!

By: Janet Phelan
Winner: The Pen to Paper Prize

At daybreak
In the time of enormous suffering
I awake to the soft staccato
Of rain on the roof.
It has been raining now
For several months. Why
Doesn’t someone do something
About it?
I fix myself a breakfast
Of genetically modified stewed prunes
With a mound of yogurt
Culled from cows treated
With Growth Stimulating Hormone.
The other kind is too dear
And the rumor is that it is the same
Damn stuff, repackaged.
The morning news announces
That the sun is shining everywhere
That we are glorious and free.
It is a tattoo that doesn’t take on me.
The days are submerged in loss, now.
I remember so clearly the dead, whom I love
And must now negotiate at every juncture
With the living,
Whom I do not.
Your face presses against the fog
Transmuting from ethereal to not even
Detectable. I sometimes see you
Flit through the eyes of another
A certain sidelong glance
A penetrating and thoughtful expression
And an avalanche begins in my heart.
It is tricky to stay alive
Under such circumstances
Anything but studied indifference
Can be detected
A leap out of camera range here
A twirl out of jurisdiction there
And playing a deadly game of cat’s cradle
With the wires
Which are now everywhere
The argyle network of power lines
And transformers, above
And the mesh of secret cables, below
Where the weapons lie in wait
Like coiled copperheads.
It won’t be much longer
I tell myself
As I swab some mascara on my lashes
The world has been split in two
Those who know
And those who don’t
Fear is the only thing we have in common
And that divides, not unites.
In the reflection of the mirror
I see it gathering outside the window,
Darkly.
It has grown so large, so intricate!
I breathe in the dampness of rain,
Loss and a million years of shattered history.
Outside the window,
It moves in.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

By: Mo Ali
Winner: The Rashi Prize

Being sexually abused as a child is hard to deal with as a young adult.
Growing up, living in poverty was embarrassing.
Having to admit to my friends that I have four mental illnesses was terrifying.
But you know, coming clean about the abuse, poverty, and mental illness all seemed feasible –
And so I did.
I was elevated to the highest grounds of liberation – I WAS FREE!!!
Until a dark secreted disease decided to put chains on me
It was sugar coated, to the point where the chains were glamorized
And a slow death is walking the runways this season
On the billboards, tv, and on the cover of vogue
Is a vague
Description of beauty
With so much detail in the criteria.
I read it through; this is what I want to be, that is what I want in me
I continue to feed and it eats away, leaving behind scar, skin, and bone
Faking a smile, thinking this is the way, as my belly groans.
Shit! I’m caught grasping my tummy, someone offers food
I turn around and quickly refuse, hoping not to come across as rude.
What goes up must come down, the law of physics has reversed for me
What goes down must come up or out; through puke, poop, or pee.
Only through the tricks I learn, the status I earn
I’m in control of what’s rightfully mine.
But is that so when I’m sitting in emergency with my heart rate on the decline?
On my runway walk of death, I fear of the unknown
For I cannot read the signs of desperation that my body has shown.
My heart is like an old battery, any second now before it stops
Getting strained further and further as my weight continually drops
I fear my death, I fear my life, I fear my pain, am I insane?
I fear my food, I fear my mood, I fear my weight, is it too late?
I want to cry, I told a lie, I said I ate, when I discarded my plate
Great, people’s level of understanding has gone with the food at this rate.
I’m all for standing up for people’s rights; they shall not be deprived of what they deserve
But in comes the double standard, because I deprive myself of what others say I deserve.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Some touching things happened this week that reminded me that our program and my participation in it have a real impact on the people we serve.

I now stop at a rent geared to income residence, where there live a few people I have known since they lived on the street. This week, there ware two things that caught my attention about this stop.

First let me explain something. The value of the program, as I see it, is in the interaction between me and my volunteers, and the people we serve. The value increases as small interactions often become lengthy ones, and, over time, form the basis of long term relationships between our clients and me. This is valuable for reasons I will illuminate in another post, if it’s not immediately apparent.

The stop I am referring to is usually a little chaotic, with up to 20 people to serve at once – most are waiting for us on the sidewalk as we approach.

What I noticed is that once people have their supplies, and as others are trying to get theirs, people often wait patiently for a long time for the chance to speak with me. Then they leave when the discussion has ended. They really seem very pleased with the relationship.

The other thing that touched me is how one man excitedly told me about developments in his living situation. Because of the time constraints, I had to end the conversation a little earlier than would be dictated by its momentum. He then said, “Sorry (About the time), I just wanted you to know how things are going for me.”

Afterward he was talking with another fellow and I overheard him explaining that he had known me since his days on the street. That is now almost two years!

Ve’ahavta has become a part of these people’s lives, and now they are part of mine. We are both blessed by this situation.

Perry Howell
Outreach Worker, Ve’ahavta
perry@veahavta.org

By: Vaclovas Verikaitis
Winner: The Maimonides Prize

The sky was lifeless and without colour.
It hung over the city like a low ceiling in a dark, damp cellar.
The rain that came with it dripped down in hard droplets that seemed to pierce the skin.
It was an acid wash for the sins of a city gone mad.
Just a cursory glance at the ground told the story of the night before.
No amount of rain could cleanse the streets of the stench of want and desperation.
The heavy atmosphere only accentuated it.

Empty cans. Paper flying. Puke on the sidewalk.
Worst of all, the street soldiers limping home. Or somewhere.

Emaciated hordes. As grey and lifeless on their feet as the sky above.

And what of the wailing from the children who wouldn’t eat today because a parent had spent the rent money on booze?

Their mark was left on the street.

And the addict that woke up under a bridge, her arms pierced by that false light that soon turned to dark. The degradation of selling herself to get more.

Walk a block in their shoes.

Storefronts also told the story of the streets.

Pay Day loans.
Cheque cashing.
Lottery Tickets. A tax on the poor disguised as promises of a new life.
My mind continues to race as I wake up on the morning of the night.

My thoughts a nebulous composition of raw nerves. I was ruled by fear and anger. By rage and resentment.

Seeing the aftermath of the destruction of the night before only made me feel worse.
No way out.
That’s the way it is in this block.
Cars drive by.
Shining four wheeled carriages transporting people into the parallel universe of abundance.
How is this possible?
My thought pattern shifts.
You can do anything and be anyone you like, as long as you put your mind to it.
Really?
Imagine a dollar for every time someone gave me advice on how to improve my lot.
Apply yourself, things will fall into place.
Stick with the program, humble yourself.
Good advice, I suppose, if you’ve got options.

But when you’re down, the phone calls don’t get returned.
E-mails and faxes disappear into cyberspace.
You should have done this or that, they said.
But if that’s the answer, what’s the question?

Friends?
The fallacy that precludes all else.
What are friends anyways? Shoulders to cry on?
People to share joy with?
And when the joy is gone, so are the friends, like dust in the wind.
Rusty memories that haunt you, creaking in the dull, lifeless dripping rain of a grey morning.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

One foot in front of the other is the real struggle.

Going forward when the world seems to be pulling you back.

After walking for a few blocks, I take refuge under an awning outside a furniture store.
I always liked furniture stores. Lots of space.
I was out in the open, but I had no personal space of my own.

I lit up the last smoke in my pack.
I’d been saving it for something, now was as good a time as any. A thought occurred to me. Who smokes, anyways?
The poor and working classes. Mostly.
The one pleasure in a life sapping existence.
Non-smokers rights associations aren’t composed of the poor.
And my mind raced on.
Cigarettes. Tax. Cigarette tax.
Tax laws. Written by the rich to benefit the rich.
Infrastructure in place to keep the majority of the wealth in the lands of the fewest people.
The rich are insulated. And protected. Who is protecting me?
The police? Private security force of the rich?
Last night I saw and experienced what drugs and alcohol can do. Numb the pain. Dull the reality.
And tonight, the cycle will continue.
What was the story of the Greek God that every day was forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill. If he managed to push the boulder over the other side, he would be free of his labor, his punishment. Only to reach the crest and have the boulder run back down, to start the process over. And over. And over again.
This is my struggle.
And I will keep going.
And I will keep going.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Are you interested in becoming an Ve’ahavta Site Coordinator for one of our International Projects? Ve’ahavta is always looking for exceptional individuals with volunteer management skills and field experience working with community based development programs in the Caribbean and/or East and Southern Africa to commit to managing our overseas volunteers in the field. Contracts are short term (3 weeks to 2 months) with a requirement to commit to a minimum of two volunteer trips. For more information, contact Sarah Zelcer, Director of International Projects at sarah@veahavta.org or 416 964 7698 x 15.

By: Tom Hogarth
Winner: The Book of Life Prize

Long ago, when the world was yet young, mankind was but a new creature upon it. In this time the powers that be still walked the earth with man, and they were new to their powers. In this beginning time winter came to the land… and stayed on the land.

The king of Winter then declared that there would be a winter without end, until he had something of beauty to rival the gifts of other seasons. For the king of Winter envied the Spring with her rebirth and young animals happily played. He envied summer with his warmth and flowers and bounty of life. He also envied fall with her glorious many-colored foliage.

Thus it came to pass that there was an age of cold and snow; an ice age. Mankind suffered and died, and cried out to the powers that be: “Please help us!” they wailed, “We have no food and starve, we have no warmth and freeze, our children are dying!”

But although the powers that be heard their cries, the King of Winter was unmoved, and none of the other seasons or powers wanted to sacrifice any other gifts. Time passed and it looked as if Mankind and his brothers the animals would die to the last one.

Finally, hearing their cries and taking pity on them the lovely Lady Moon went to the King of Winter. “Hear me King of Winter! I give you now a gift of beauty that will not only rival the other seasons but outshine them!” So saying, the Lady Moon cut off her hair and gave it to the King of Winter.

And this is how the Northern Lights came to be; for the Northern Lights are but the hair of the beautiful Lady Moon cut off in sacrifice to the King of Winter . That is why to this day the only thing more beautiful in the night sky than the lovely lady moon herself are the northern lights…her hair.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Be part of our overseas Kinder Kits project in East Africa

Ve’ahavta will be recruiting up to 4 volunteers and 1 site coordinator for a two week placement in East Africa in September/October as part of our Kinder Kit distribution project. Volunteers will be assisting in receiving the Kinder Kits shipment and distributing supplies throughout the local community. Volunteer fees are tax deductible and will be subsidized. Ve’ahavta will coordinate flights, accommodations, and volunteer placements.

Now recruiting for our fall placement of Guyana’s medical mission

Looking for volunteers with a medical background to assist us in a tour of the indigenous regions of Guyana distributing medicine and providing health education to the local communities.

Ve’ahavta needs on-call volunteers

We are experiencing a higher than usual volume of donations and supplies. We need volunteers to sign-up for our on-call volunteer list to help with deliveries of supplies to us and shipments of donations out.

Join Ve’ahavta’s Youth Breakfast Club program

Sponsored by TNT, this program provides breakfast to youth and parents at Evangel Hall every Thursday morning from 7:30 to 8:30am.

Host a community dinner for the homeless at Evangel Hall

It’s a great way to give back to the community and provide for those in need on a more direct, interactive level.

Join our after-school homework club at one of three locations

Ve’ahavta is now recruiting volunteers for the fall semester to tutor students within the community. It’s a great chance for hands-on interaction and a highly rewarding experience for all.

Click for more Volunteer opportunities.

For all volunteer inquiries, please contact our Volunteer Desk at 416-964-7698 x 16 or by email at volunteerinfo@veahavta.org.

Ve’ahavta would like to express our gratitude to all the schools and groups for their enthusiasm and support in the Kinder Kit Project. In May and June new and gently used supplies were collected in locker dumps in six schools across Toronto. These supplies will be used provide underprivileged children will the educational materials they require to receive a complete education when they return to school in September.

In 2010, we will distribute 15,000 Kinder Kits to children in need locally and internationally. To help us achieve this goal, please consider sponsoring a Kinder Kit for $18 or collecting school supplies to donate to the project

Click here to sponsor a Kinder Kit.

Thank you to all of the organizations who supported the Kinder Kit Locker Dump Project:

• Robbins Hebrew Academy (Bathurst Campus)
• Netivot Hatorah
• Eitz Chaim Schools
• Bialik Hebrew Day School
• Upper Canada College
• CHAT (Kimel Campus)

I volunteered on the Ve’ahavta van with my two children and I it was such an incredible experience I felt the need to write to you. I asked Perry, who was the gentleman who took us all out, to provide me with your email addresses since I really wanted to tell you about our experience.

Firstly, I have to say this is an incredible program, and I think that your organization is doing wonderful work on the streets of Toronto. I am aware of some of your other initiatives which are all very impressive. We learned about Ve’ahavta at the Bar Mitzvah of a close friend, and my children immediately decided that they too wanted to make centerpieces’ for donation and volunteer to give back to the community. Their B’nai Mitzvah is on June 5th, and I feel fortunate that we were able to do at least one day of volunteering before our simcha so that the children would hopefully realize how fortunate we are and how important it is to give back. Thanks so much for affording us this opportunity.

Secondly, I have to say that I was extremely impressed by Perry. He’s an amazing young man with a very special way about him. My kids took to him immediately – he made us all feel welcome, useful and helpful. He leads with a very gentle touch and a generosity of spirit that can’t be taught.

When on the streets, his empathy for the people he serves is palpable with every gesture. He is an amazing example to volunteers and I really appreciated that my children experienced being on this special day with him in particular. He told us that he loves what he does, and this is apparent by his obvious compassion and passion for what he does. And this passion is infectious to the people who work with him. Despite the fact that he likely works with different volunteers on every shift, he managed to make us all feel unique and special, and made my children feel extremely appreciated, which in turn, made them feel like giving back more.

I just wanted you to know that all this care that you take both with your projects, your staff and your ability to assimilate volunteers, is greatly appreciated.

Again, thanks for the opportunity to help.

- Ric Bienstock, MJRH volunteer

It is a very meaningful program. Many of us take advantage of the fact that we don’t struggle at school. However, with certain kids at the program, the prospect of failure is always at the back of their minds. It is imperative we help students avoid that negative mindset, providing them with the help to get back on track. It is extremely important that students be provided with every opportunity to succeed.

- Anonymous Homework Club Volunteer

Our June 2010 Guyana team returned home this weekend. Over the past two weeks Ve’ahavta volunteers, Bekkie Vineberg (Site Coordinator), Dr. Sandy Buchman (physician), Seth Buchman (support) , Victoria Siu (pharmacy), Sarah Wilson (paramedic), and Sue Rebick (nurse) have been in Guyana on a medical mission. You can read more about their journey in our Field Notes: Guyana June 2010 correspondence.

The following letter of appreciation was received from Dr. Allison Brown, Regional Health Officer, Region 2, Guyana.

Things are shaping up nicely for the official launch of the Ve’ahavta Street Academy (VSA). This has been an amazing journey for me as the Founder/Director. I am very honored and proud to be part of the Ve’ahavta team and look forward to an action packed summer with the students of VSA. Thank you to everyone who has been part of this process and stay tuned for updates throughout the summer. Ve’ahavta Street Academy officially launches next Tuesday June 29th, 2010 at 10am, at George Brown College. Thank you to all who have supported this venture. Stay tuned for updates…

Click here for more information about VSA.

Theresa Schrader
Ve’ahavta Street Academy Founder/Director

On Sunday June 20th, 2010 Ve’ahavta’s Outreach Team lead by Perry Howell, Outreach Worker, handed out gifts to our fathers’ on the street. It was understood that challenges were to be expected during the presentation of these gifts as for some men on the street being a father in the position they are in may bring haunting memories. However with the grace of goodness and their best interests in our hearts we were welcomed and the great men who received these gifts took it into perspective. Some men broke down and spoke of them missing their children. Some men smiled at the though of their kids, some of them being so far away. In light of any separation, however, those men had a chance to revisit with their children through memory. It is certainly healthier then ignoring it altogether. Thank you to our great supporters and donors for these gifts and their sponsorship made it possible to fuel the Ve’ahavta Street Academy this summer for those looking to improve their lives through education and awareness.

Hi Everyone,

Today I handed out three baskets to fathers I knew, and then drove the rest to two drop ins where Nir and I handed them out. One was the good neighbors club, a drop in for men over 50. The other was the Salvation Army on Jarvis south of Richmond. In the latter case, the social workers wanted to decide who got them, but I told them it was important that people know its from Ve’ahavta. Having a relationship with the night staff there, I believe my request was honoured.

People at the good neighbors club were very appreciative, although there was some tension when we ran out of baskets before everybody got one. Thankfully, the social worker dealt with this effectively.

The most meaningful one to me is the one I gave to a man named Nathan, a young man who has lost touch with his daughter, but who says he stays alive for her. He speaks to me about her fairly regularly. He gave me a deeply appreciative handshake and look in the eye as I handed it to him, and Nir got a picture of us together.

To those who sponsored the baskets, thank you very much for this very meaningful gesture.

Warm regards,
Perry

Perry Howell
Outreach Worker, Ve’ahavta

By: Lorren Stewart
Winner: The Chaim Potok Prize

This is my story. When my parents had me, I was addicted to heroin. I had to fight to stay alive. When I was six years old, my parents both died from heroin overdoses. I was put into foster homes until I started to run away at the age of ten. I lived on the streets where I survived and where my fight really began. Living in doorways and back alleys, I got into drugs. You name the drug, I did it, because it helped to take the pain away.

When I found out I was going to have a baby at the age of 13, I knew I could not keep it. I had no one and I was not willing to bring a baby up at that age. I decided to give her a good family who could give her what she needed to live.

After having her, I went back to the streets. I could not forget the pain of what I just did because I had given away my only family that I could love. There were many days I would be so high, I would not sleep. One time, I did not sleep for a week and I tried to end my life. I made a call to someone at welfare. I didn’t know what I said to the lady on the phone. I hung up the phone and sat down and shot myself with cocaine. The lady tried to call back. I would not answer the phone. The next thing I knew, there were police and firemen coming through the door, and the ambulance was taking me away to the hospital where I stayed for a few weeks.

The lady who picked up the phone on that day saved my life. I did thank her in person because that is the day my life turned around. I went into detox for a month. I felt great the day I got out, but it was not even a minute before I was back to doing drugs. I knew it was wrong. I sat down on the street. The lady who tried to help me came out from her office. She sat down and we started to talk. She told me that if I wanted help, I should just ask. I looked at her and said, “help me please”. We went to work. I got myself into a shelter. That helped me get into a program that helped me get into a community house where I would live for two years. I was doing well. I got myself into school where I could learn how to read, write, and do basic math. I worked hard every day. I have my ups and downs but I push on because I would like become a writer. I had to move out of my place because my two years were over. I moved into a house with a lady who seemed nice. It started out good, but the lady was getting weird four days before the end of the month. She told me I had two days to move out. I just found out I was diagnosed with lung cancer, and I was very sick with chemo treatments. I didn’t know where to go.

On December 1^st, I ended up down on the Eastside of Vancouver where I didn’t want to be. All the shelters were packed. It was very hard to find one. I ran into an old friend who said I could stay with him. Wrong move. I got back into shooting heroin. I phoned a friend of mine. I asked for help because I didn’t want to be back on the street where I had worked so hard to get away from. I phoned a friend and he told me to come stay with him. I knew it was a safe place for me.

Before school, I found a place of my own. I am still in school and I am not doing drugs. Don’t get me wrong. Now I am older, and I’m still fighting to stay clean, and this time is the time because I am very happy in my life. I would like to thank a special teacher for believing in me to write my story.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Are you interested in learning more about social justice issues? Visit www.on1foot.com, an online database of Jewish social justice texts designed to support and promote the teaching of social justice.

Hi everyone,

The team got up super early this morning in order to be at clinic by 7 am so that they could ensure that they would see all remaining patients in Friendship before departing.  They just called from the bus which is on its way to Supenaam, the boat stelling. Before arriving in Supenaam they will stop at Sudde Regional Hospital to donate a brand new hemocue & cuvettes which Ve’ahavta had purchased for donation, thanks to our support from the CAW Social Justice Fund. This machine will be used by midwives and nurses who provide outreach services in the Region from Sudde, and will be used in particular to measure the blood sugar of pregnant women.

In Supenaam, the team will bid goodbye to Melissa Sissons and to our cook, Sandra. Our boat driver Morris will take them to Parika (about a 25 minute ride on the Essequibo River), and from there, it’s about a 40 minute drive to Georgetown. The team is traveling much lighter now, having distributed much of their supplies along the way.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend and looking forward to seeing some of you at the airport on Sunday night!

With best wishes,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

Good evening everyone,

Just a little note to let you know that the team ran their second last clinic today in Friendship, seeing about 60 people. Friendship is fairly remote and it took quite some time to travel there. Getting there including traveling for a few hours overland and then a boat ride down a narrow section of the Pomeroon river. Bekkie says that the community is beautiful, though buggy! She called quickly to report back and then had to retreat into her tent to hide from the mosquitoes. Tomorrow the team will run a morning clinic and then will make their way back to Supenaam and then back to Parika (by boat). From Parika they will be picked up by bus and taken to Georgetown, where they will spend their last two nights at the Tower Hotel. Although the Tower is a stretch from a 5 star hotel, I think it will likely feel like a palace to our team tomorrow. There is a great pool in the hotel courtyard which I am sure they will enjoy…as well as the flushing toilets and hot showers! The final day and a half of the trip will include a trip evaluation and a tourist jaunt to Kaiteur Falls, the longest single drop waterfall in the world (see attached photo). It’s hard to believe that almost two weeks have gone by!

With best wishes,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

By: Liz
The Gilad Shalit Prize

What has become of my life?
I no longer have a life
I did not have a death
I had an eviction
So I simply became a ghost
I wander the streets, day and night
Invisible to the unknowing
Untouchable to the uncaring
Incomprehensible to myself
Inconsolable in my grief
For my life
Bewildered
Bereft
Desolate
Despairing
Despair being the unforgivable sin
Unwelcome in Heaven
Unwelcome on earth
Alone
I want to seize my life back
I alone can do this
I cannot do it alone
Won’t someone help me?
Please?

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Hello again,

Just a short note to let you know that I did finally get to connect with Bekkie this afternoon. The team ran a very busy clinic all day in St Deny. It took about an hour to get there from Mainstay because of a very rough road, but they made it and will be camping out tonight. Bekkie says that the health care worker in St Deny is wonderful and that the village itself is beautiful and quite remote. Seth had a good day and wore his birthday crown for most of it . Yesterday, the rain did let up about midday and the team ended up seeing about 35 patients in Mainstay. Bekkie reports that Sandy, our physician, has been absolutely amazing, seeing every patient and consulting on almost every case, even for patients that are receiving family planning or other types of counseling. It takes an incredible amount of skill, patience, and dedication to work long hours and maintain such a thorough work ethic in environments that are often challenging and sometimes without all the necessary resources one is used to being able to access as a physician working in a major city like Toronto. The rest of our volunteers, Victoria, Sarah, Seth and Sue have all been equally dedicated, hardworking, and have been applying their skills and lending their individual expertise to the clinic. The team has been cohesive and really wonderful.

Tomorrow morning, the team will travel an hour or so to Charity, another town, and from there will catch the regional boat to take them to Friendship, an Amerindian village located way up the Pomeroon river.

Have a wonderful evening.
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

Hello everyone,

The team has been running a clinic in St. Deny today. This will be a short email because there is limited cell phone access in that community and I haven’t been able to speak directly to Bekkie yet. She did leave me a message saying that everything and everyone is fine. Looking forward to sharing a fuller update soon!

In the meantime, I wanted to publicly wish Seth Buchman, one of our volunteers in the field, a very happy birthday! I know the team was planning some special celebrations and I am sure this particular birthday – celebrated in the Amerindian communities of Guyana – will be one he will never forget.

With best wishes,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

Good Morning,

The team is doing well – they had a very busy day yesterday, seeing a total of 85 patients at clinic in Lima Sands and doing a significant amount of health promotion throughout the day. Bekkie noted that she has seen quite a few cases of infertility, which taken in context in a place like Guyana, is a really difficult and painful affliction because of the cultural norms and expectations to have children. The team also helped a young girl who had a major gash, which she sustained from getting her ankle caught in bicycle spokes.

Every trip, our volunteers tend to discover their own personal niche and settle into their roles and responsibilities, which sometimes end up looking differently than how we had anticipated. On this project, we have been finding that Sarah Wilson (our paramedic and nursing student) and Melissa Sissons (nurse who co-directs the medical missionary college at Bethany) have been focusing on registering and triaging patients, while Sue Rebick (our nurse) has really discovered that she loves public health education and outreach. She and Bekkie have been doing a lot of individual and group sessions, focusing on issues including nutrition, hypertension, diabetes, oral hygiene, and family planning.

There is a huge downpour right now, and Bekkie spoke with the Health Care Worker and learned that because of the weather, the clinic is currently empty. So the team is waiting it out at the resort in Mainstay, hoping that the skies clear to allow them to do some work today. They are all in great spirits and have been joined by “Aunty” Irene Perreira, a volunteer with the Bartica Lions Club.

I did find a little you tube link with some images of Lake Mainstay and the resort where the team has stayed the past couple of nights – enjoy!  www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhoY_tKeEXc

Have a great day,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

By: Anonymous
Winner: The Albert Einstein Prize

I can’t say where I am from
For I am a drifter of space and spaces
I can’t say where I am going
For the future is nothing but a perspective
But I can tell you where I am
I am here
And I am changing.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Good morning everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend.

The team found their Thursday clinic in Capoey to be so busy that they decided to extend their work their by another day. The clinic was quite busy, and they saw approximately 130 patients. A few of the more significant health issues they observed included large numbers of individuals experiencing hypertension and diabetes- moreso than what we typically see in Amerindian villages, whose lifestyle and diet usually mean fewer risk factors for these issues. One possible reason for this could be Capoey’s relative proximity to Sudde, a larger town which has access to more Western-style amenities, including dietary options.

The team also noticed a great need for education around the importance of getting pap smears done regularly and the risk of HPV, which can lead to genital warts, cervical cancer, and other issues. The team ran out of certain supplies, including oral contraceptives and some topical creams, and the Regional Health Office is restocking them.

The team took a much needed day of rest yesterday in Mainstay, which is a resort in the area. Because of all the moving around and heavy lifting and intense heat, we sensed the team needed a little rest. They will be sleeping a total of 3 nights at Mainstay – in beds – and had the chance to relax, shower, and have a nice team dinner together yesterday evening. They are hard at work as I write in Lima Sands. The Health Care Worker, Basanti, and a local midwife who works with her are currently working out of the local nursery school next to the Primary School instead of out of a proper clinic because the health post is being rebuilt. As a result, they have been struggling with moving all of the contents of the old Health Post into the nursery school, and with a lack of private rooms in order to maintain patient privacy. Our team has helped them improvise by creating more private rooms using sheets, towels, rope & clothespins.

I’ve attached a photo of Bekkie & Basanti, as well as a photo of the primary school.

Have a wonderful day,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

Good morning everyone,

I just got off the phone with Bekkie. Everyone is doing great and they are just waiting for the boat to pull up to take them across Lake Mainstay and over to Lake Capoey. Capoey is the next village and is a magical place. Bekkie and I visited the community and met with its wonderful Health Care Worker, Alice, last week.

When Bekkie and I spoke yesterday morning, the clinic at Mashabo had thus far been very quiet, and the team was beginning to wonder whether any patients would show up. (An American team had visiting the community a few months ago, so we reasoned that as an explanation). However, by late morning the clinic became quite busy and the team saw 60 patients. They saw a large number of young women – many under the age of 25 – who had at least 5 children. The team distributed a lot of family planning (depo provera, oral contraceptives, condoms) and did a lot of counseling. Our project also has a multivitamin distribution program (pregnant women, general adults and children) coupled with a de-worming program, and that was well received. The Health Care Worker, Esther, was amazing, and the team worked very closely with her. They uncovered a case of undiagnosed gestational diabetes and were able to do blood sugar testing and provide the patient with a glucometer, lancets and strips. Sandy also suspects that one child he saw has Turner’s Syndrome, a genetic syndrome, and may be a candidate for surgery down the road. The team will be working with Dr. Allison Brown, the Regional Health Officer, to ensure follow up.

Transport does take up a lot of time, as we are in more remote areas and moving a good deal of supplies. The volunteers are doing well, despite very hot days and nights, some heavy rain, some leaky tents, and the loss of one of the team cell phones down a pit latrine (a replacement is already in the works!). Sometimes the challenges we face in the field are a little…unpredictable!

The team is travelling with two volunteers from the Lions Club of Bartica – Beverley and George – as well as a local cook from Mashabo we have hired and Melissa Sissons, the co-Director of the college in Bethany. The team is debriefing nightly and feeling very positive so far. I let them know that Chicago won the Stanley Cup and that the World Cup Opening Ceremonies is today in South Africa.

I’ve attached a photo of the view walking into Capoey from the landing, as well as a photo of Bekkie with Capoey’s health care worker, Alice.

Have a wonderful day,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

By: Anonymous
Winner: The Joseph, Coat of Many Colours Prize

I am me. I am me
no fake outs, no excuses
no I will not, I will not let you
control me. Only respect me and my space
I will not sit by and let you degrade
me. No I will not forgive you for the
endless pain you have caused me. I will
not forget.

I will move forward. I will make it
through to higher ground.
I will compromise only to my benefits

I am me, a broken vessel
a repaired vessel. A stronger vessel of
hope and peace. Stronger because I
love me. Stronger because I have found the courage to say no without regret

Me.  I am me
Beautiful no matter what you say
Stronger because I found the strength
Courageous because I need to leap into
bigger and better. Fearless regardless of
my past. Looking towards the future
never shying away from who I am.
I am me.
I define me.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Ve’ahavta is proud to support Israel during this difficult time by sending 3,000 Kinder Kits to underprivileged children in Israel. This will ensure that they not only receive the proper nutrition but also the education supplies necessary for them to succeed academically.

The value of education and freedom has sustained us as a people regardless of our geographical location, denomination, and financial status. In order to ensure the future of the Jewish people, it is imperative that all children in Israel have a chance to develop a love for learning.

Thank you to the following organizations for supporting the shipment to Israel:

• Robbins Hebrew Academy
• Beth Tzedec Congregation
• Holy Blossom Temple
• Beth Tikvah Synagogue

We will continue to support Israel and work within Israel at all times as both Ve’ahavta and the state of Israel continue to thrive and grow.

Am yisrael chai. The nation of Israel shall live.

Good Afternoon!

Our team has now arrived in Mashabo, another Seventh Day Adventist Amerindian community located along the end of Lake Mashabo.  It is a beautiful village.  The local health post (see attached photo) services a population of about 400 people.  There is a large population of children in this particular community.  The team got up very early this morning to pack up.  The health post in Bethany is located along the river’s edge, but the missionary college where the team was staying is located about 20 minutes away via tractor ride.  After breakfast and after packing up their personal bags, the team came to the health post to pack up the clinical supplies into a large trailer which was hitched to the tractor.  The team then boarded the tractor for the hour long ride to Mashabo.

They just had lunch and are running their second clinic.  They are all looking forward to a nice swim this evening!

Have a great day.

Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

Good morning,

Just a little note to let you know that our team is running its first clinic today in Bethany.  The turnout has been steady so far with a larger number of elderly patients.  The team has been joined by a volunteer from the Lions Club of Bartica, Beverley, as well as by Melissa Sissons, one of the Americans who runs the Medical Missionary College which operates nearby.  Melissa is a registered nurse.

The team did experience its first heavy rainstorm yesterday just as they arrived in Bethany and had to unload all of their supplies in the rain, as well as endure a wet tractor ride up to BMMC.  However, the skies cleared up and the team was able to rest, receive an orientation, have a great lunch, dinner & breakfast.  Sandy even did a little suturing workshop for some of the students at BMMC last night.

Everyone is in great spirits and adjusting nicely.

Just to give you a little context, I have attached a few photos of the health post where the team is working, as well as of a local traditional hut in Bethany and the BMMC.

Have a wonderful day,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer
Director of International Projects and Education

By: Ruben Delgada
Winner: The Chai Prize

In the place I grew up in there were always troubles
that I never knew about until my age got doubled.

I grew up in a corrupt home, kept my feelings deep inside,
that’s why I felt alone,
criminal behaviour was seared into my dome,
because that’s all that I encountered
everyday I walked home.

My emotions were out of control so I started smoking weed,
did it a few times until I felt the need –
to try to get money just to succeed,
when I started thinking money,
I started thinking greed,
but I was too young to notice so I started selling weed.

I never went in too deep,
thought about where this would lead,
but by then it was too late
because I already planted the seed.

As time passed, my family was getting locked up,
seeing this happen more than once left my mind fucked up,
father figures behind bars left my heart roughed up and aching,
ever since then I despised seeing bacon,
so much so that I ended up being taken away,
bracelets put on me, left the days all grey,
life was getting to me, it was getting hotter than May

Even in pure darkness there is always light,
so no matter what comes your way you gotta always fight,
because you never know what might be pulled out of the hat,
bad decisions might be holding you back,
but you never know when a second chance can land on your lap,
you just gotta make sure you follow the map
because if you take the wrong path you might get trapped
with nowhere to go except for back…

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Hello everyone,

Good morning!

This is a short note to let you know that our team, our bags, and all of our supplies have arrived safely in Guyana and were cleared through customs without a hitch.  Bekkie called at about 8:30 this morning to let me know hat everyone was great and that the team was on its way to Parika, the boat stelling where a speedboat will be waiting to take them and their supplies to their first community, Bethany.  Bethany is an Amerindian Seventh Day Adventist Community located along the Pomeroon River.  It is a beautiful boat drive there.  The team will be housed and fed for the next 2 days and nights at the Bethany Medical Missionary College, an American run facility located just above the village.  They will be working at a health post located at the river’s edge alongside Esther, a health care worker from a neighbouring village, Mashabo.

Have a wonderful day – I’ll be in touch again tomorrow.

With best wishes,
Sarah

Sarah Zelcer

Director of International Projects and Education
Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian & Relief Committee

By: J.L. Marlowe
Winner: The Aggadada Prize

It is mid-November. I am sitting beside the reflecting pool in Nathan Philips Square in downtown Toronto wondering where I can find some cardboard for a bed tonight. Skaters are doing turns around the pool, which at this time of year is an ice rink. The sounds of children laughing comes back at me, clearly heard, even over the rink music issuing forth from the speakers that the keepers of this place have set at strategic positions around the area.

I have been homeless now for the past nine years and the wear and tear of the streets has not been kind to me, although I am sure others have fared far worse.  That is the reality of the streets. They are hard and mean places that can swallow you whole, if you let them.  Perhaps, I am better off than most street people, because I am aware of the dangers more profoundly than my peers. I choose to reside not in the city center per se but rather in the Don Valley, where as a young boy I grew up running from every kid in my neighbourhood because of my heritage.  I am an Indian. Aboriginal, to be precise.

I know the places in the valley of my youth that are relatively safe from the drug addicts and gangs which inhabit the inner-city streets.  The places where, even today, some of the beauty of nature still dwells, close, yet light-years apart from the busy streets of metropolitan Toronto.

So many things have changed in the Don Valley since my youth. I remember hearing the eerie cries of the peacocks echoing across the valley and the occasional roar of a lion issuing forth from the Riverdale Zoo as the last rays of light drained from the sky and followed the arch of sun which slid down the sky disappearing below the western horizon.

At night, when shadows mingled with the light of the moon, upon the walls of my room. I could hear the sounds of the trains, rolling by our house in the valley below, their whistles tooting warnings into nights’ stillness and I could feel the rumblings of their weight moving over the ties that gave the tracks purchase and then, the songs of crickets would fill the air, and I would dream of mysterious places within myself.

And I remember, the crystal clear autumn air, the wonderful scents and glorious colours of the leaves. The smell of decay and natures’ promise of new and wondrous things to behold. And I remember, the beauty of the animals of the woods: the chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons. They were my friends. And I will never forget them or that time in my life when autumn refreshed my soul with her passionate beauty.

When I was a small boy I would play in the woods of the Don Valley by myself. I would invent imaginary playmates and dream of far off places that existed only in the confines of my mind. I never understood why other children didn’t like me, I just wanted to play with them and enjoy the games that all children learn. But it wasn’t to be.

As I grew older, the lines between hatred and ignorance began to blur and I chose to escape through the use of alcohol and drugs to deaden my senses and shield me from the loneliness that I had come to know so well. But I always saw the beauty in others, which seemed to evade some of them, leaving them empty and unable to recognize their own significance.

When I was little, I grew up believing in heroes. Batman, Superman and the Flash. They were the guardians of my youth and instilled the values of truth and justice in my very being. My parents doted on me but were unaware of the turmoil that transpired in my daily life.  They were simple folk who concerned themselves with the daily regime of survival. We were poor. It’s been years now since the death of my parents, decades in fact. There is no one anymore. I am alone now in the world.  Sometimes the loneliness is overwhelming. As I sit in my place in the woods, that has become my home, I remember, all of my hopes and dreams. The woman that I loved, and who loved me. Although I am getting older now, my dreams still live strong in my mind.  I refuse to quit, to give up, with everything inside of me I will fight to achieve my dreams. For my spirit is strong.

I used to believe that native people were drunks and worthless. That they killed without a care. That they were savages, who needed to be eradicated.

When I was little, other children would call me names. Redskin, Wahoo, Wagon-burner and they wouldn’t play with me. I was an Indian. I hated being Indian.

I remember riding on the streetcar and seeing an Indian lying in a doorstep near Moss Park Armory.  He was passed out, an empty bottle of wine lying on the steps beside him. He had wet his pants and his urine had left its tracks across the sidewalk where it found its way to the gutter. No, I didn’t like being an Indian.

Even television depicted natives as savages, rapists, murderers and drunks. John Wayne surely wouldn’t lie!

I was in my mid 20’s when I discovered the truth about my people. The beauty and the rich history and traditions of our culture. When I realized that everything I had been taught by society was wrong, it opened my eyes to the plight of my people and the attempt to systematically eradicate and hide the truth. Through the teachings of my elders I discovered who I was, but the damage had already taken its toll.

I am drawn back to the present by the voice of a young girl, perhaps 12 or 13, “Excuse me sir, are you hungry? Would you like some sandwiches and a juice?”

“Thank you” I say, as I take the bag offered to me with a smile. I watch as she moves off in silence, into the night and the city.

The clock tower of the Old City Hall chimes the bells nine times as I bite into a baloney sandwich. It’s getting late; I’ll have to find some cardboard soon, and a new place to bed down for the night.

Last night I saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They came to my camp through the woods. I could hear the breaking of branches under their feet, as they made their way towards me. But I never fled because my camp is hidden well in the foliage of the forest and, to my knowledge, no one knew I was there. I realized that I was mistaken, when I heard them talking; one of them was saying “He’s here somewhere. I saw him in here and he never left.” It was then that I realized I’d been followed.

Two nights ago,I went to the Good Sheppard to get some food. It was then that I saw these four. They were beating on Robert, another street person I know, who is mentally handicapped. I have known Robert for two years now. He calls me ‘Tom’ although that is not my name, but then, he calls everyone Tom – even women! He is a harmless and beautiful being who I am honoured to share the planet with, Robert makes me see and feel the true complexity and infinite meaning of the word ‘compassion’. Through Robert’s eyes the world is a simple place, where bad is bad and good is good. There are no in-betweens for Robert.

When I saw there four individuals were harming him and trying to take his money I ran at them and told them to leave him alone. They didn’t like that “You got a problem dog?” said the biggest one.

“No, I’m only asking you to leave my friend alone.”

“Well, what are you going to do if we don’t leave your friend alone?”

“Yeah.” Said a third. The fourth one, who was about 6’2 just stared at me and smiled. I knew he was the leader.

All this time Robert kept blubbering incoherently and crying. “Well, I wont do anything, I’m just asking you guys to give my friend a break, he’s a good person who doesn’t harm anyone.”

It was then that Tex and Rutledge came around the corner and said “What’s going on here?”

“Why nothing officer, we were just leaving.” Said the leader as they turned and left.

“You o.k. Robert?” said Rutledge.

“I’m ok, my friend Tom here helped me officer.”

“You’d better watch yourself Tom, those guys are animals.” Said Tex.

I went over to Robert and helped him over to the line, where other homeless people were lined up for supper. As we passed the officers I said “Thanks for the help, I’ll be fine.”

“Tom, why did those boys try to take my money?” asked Robert. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with an answer. So I just said “Don’t worry about it Robert, they won’t bother you anymore.”

I could hear them approaching, but I was unable to make any move to escape for fear of giving my location away. Methodically, they searched the underbrush, like police officers working a grid at a crime scene. It was only a matter of time before they found me. I decided to make my move. I eased out of the hole that I had excavated into the side of the hill, past the camouflage that hid the entrance, and tried to escape unnoticed when I heard one of them yell “There he is.”

“Get that motherfucker,” cried their leader.

In seconds they fell on me, and the punches and kicks came down like raindrops from an angry sky. I tried to shield myself, but it was useless; they were bent on revenge for all the hardships of their own lives, and I was their release. I was glad it was me and not Robert.

Eventually, the beating stopped, their thirst for vengeance sated. And they left me alone there in the woods. But not until they destroyed my home. I lost consciousness and awoke to rain falling on my face, the branches of a maple tree thrashing in the wind. I tried to gather my strength and rise up from the forest floor but the pain went through me from head to foot and I fell back down, helpless, amid the fallen leaves, mosses, and decay that makeup the forest floor. And I lapsed into the darkness at the edge of sanity. I do not know how long I lay there; it must have been a few hours. When I woke, I was in severe pain and the darkness had fallen, my clothes were wet from the rain that had fallen. In the distance I could see the thin line of light that was the Don Valley Parkway, the car lights speeding off into the night.  And I remembered a time when there were four sets of train tracks, where the parkway now sits and spews forth its putrid air; it was a time when terms like ‘acid rain’ never existed in the vocabulary of men. When the Don River was full of life. Fish, frogs, and turtles flourished and life as a whole was less complicated than today. But the pain in my ribs, back, and face stir me from my memories.

I raised myself up and made my way to the streets and the relative safety of Nathan Philips Square where I now sit and nurse the pain and humiliation of my circumstance, alone in a city of millions . People see me as a person who is a blight on the very fabric of society, an outcast, a drug addict or an alcoholic. And in truth, I have been some of these things. But just like them, I have dreams for a future beyond the streets. To attend university, to be a person who has it within him to help others less-fortunate.

All I ever wanted was to fit in, to be loved and held. To be given a chance to distinguish myself for myself. Perhaps, there is still time for me.

I move off of the bench and head towards Richmond Street. I remember seeing some cardboard there a couple of days ago. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll still be there. I have to find a place to lie down and sleep. I am tired and hungry and I wish that I could go home.

*

The funeral home was on Danforth Avenue in the east end of Toronto. Robert made his way to the steps and into the viewing area carrying a dozen roses. He walked over to the coffin and looked into the face of his friend.  Then he placed the roses atop his friend and said “Goodbye Tom, you were my best best friend.” He turned and exited the parlor the way he had come and walked along the street towards Donald’s subway. High above the sun broke through the clouds, its rays warming everything, and for a moment in time, the cold November day seemed like the first day of spring. Robert smiled to himself as he walked along.

Footnote:

*In the early morning hours of November 11, Remembrance Day, the body of a person described as “a homeless person” was found deceased in a laneway just off Richmond Street. It appeared that the person had succumbed to injuries sustained from a beating. No names were released. However, an officer, name of Sgnt. Rutledge, seemed to recall that the person was simply known as ‘Tom’.

In his pocket was found a poem titled “The Plight Of The Homeless” which we now publish here below.

THE PLIGHT OF THE HOMELESS

On our city streets
They eat and they sleep
They beg for their livelihood
Living ain’t cheap
A few nickels and dimes
May help them get through
Until the next day repeats itself
Skies aren’t always blue

Many a night on our city benches
They make their beds
Out in the trenches
Never afraid of having to roam
Proud in their stature
Yet they haven’t a home
Who are these people? What makes them tick?
Those are the questions
The politicians can’t lick

Some say they’re crazy
Some say they’re nuts
Eating out of garbage cans
And smoking old butts
But I’ll tell you something friend
You can take to the bank
They may be unwashed
They may even smell rank
But they won’t rob you
Wouldn’t steal a cent
Sometimes I imagine that they’re angels
With the Good Lords intent

To teach us compassion
Put love to a face
A part of mankind
The human race
If you look into their eyes
You’ll see deep pools of thought
Minds filled with concepts
Which schools never taught
One day you may wake from a dream
To find yourself there
Out on the street
With no one to care
Alone and destitute
With nary a hope
Out on the mean streets
Just trying to cope

If such a day comes
And I pray that it doesn’t
You may wake from a nightmare
To find that it wasn’t
Should that day come
I hope that you see
That the plight of the homeless
Concerns everyone even you and me
And so the next time that you see someone
Down on their luck
Please offer some kind words
And not just a buck

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

By: Nicole Luongo
Winner: The Shalom Alechem Prize

The following is an introduction to a book that is not yet written:

It’s freezing. The basement window is wide open, and the wind has blown the bedcovers off of my body and onto the floor. It’s mid-December, and all I’m wearing is unbalanced it feels, having on only one sock, but I don’t want to bother searching for its partner. Trying to find anything amid the heaps of dirty clothing, rotten food scraps, and empty liquor bottles on the floor would be futile and I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to be able to stand, anyways. I reach down and remove the sock. Much better. Now I need a drink. I vaguely recall that I have left a half-full bottle of vodka at my feet. Having to go get more later will be agonizing – the nearest liquor stores is blocks away, and I can barely crawl, let alone walk – but for now I’m ok. For now I have all I need. Emptying the bottle, I lay my head on the pillow and sigh with relief. The sense of euphoria that accompanies the alcohol is both instantaneous and sublime. Curling into a tight ball, I let go of my loose grip on consciousness. I drift, fantasizing about down quilts and warmth.

That month – December of 2008 – was the worst of my life. I spent Christmas Eve in an emergency shelter, sneaking nips of the whisky that I had snuck in and hidden in a toilet tank. Each time I went to the bathroom I emerged flushed and wild-eyed, growing more intoxicated as the night wore on. I was nineteen years old and knew that I was going to die. Years spent battling an eating disorder, mental illness, and eventually addiction had left me beaten, broken, and completely exhausted. Death, with its finality and the promise of undisturbed quiet, was almost alluring. I was barely existing as it was, each day spent seeking something – anything – to fill the yawning hole in my chest. Every moment revolved around the search for food or booze or whatever it was that could provide temporary relief from the emptiness I felt.

As a child I had been born with a vivid imagination. I envisioned myself becoming an artist, an athlete, a politician, my dreams not yet limited by the banal sensibilities that characterize adulthood. What I didn’t predict was that before I entered my twenties I would be homeless and barely clinging onto life by a thread. What follows is an account of my first two decades. My story won’t be completely linear – I can’t guarantee that dates will be exact or that my memory won’t distort some recollections. So much of my time was spent either drunk or in some sort of altered state. Events blur at the seams and bleed into one another, and what I’m left with is a patchy, disjointed motif of pain and trauma intermingled with brief bursts of unequivocal joy.

What I do know is that when I was diagnosed as bipolar, it made perfect sense. What else could explain the fits of glee, followed always by the crushing, crippling despair? Sadly, being told that you have a mental illness isn’t all it takes to get better. In fact, some may argue that it’s akin to receiving a life sentence. What I was given, however, was a name for what I felt. And if what I felt had a name, maybe I wasn’t crazy after all. Some people dislike the label; they feel that having it is an automatic qualifier, an invitation for judgment. Realistically, I’m more apt to be judged when my condition goes untreated. When I’m drunk off my face, for example, and wreaking havoc in society. I realized that I could live if I wanted to. And, oddly enough, I did want to. So began my journey back from the abyss.

My body is conditioned with the memory of what alcohol has done to it. A single whiff of rum or vodka is all my stomach needs to automatically begin contracting – a visceral refusal of the noxious substance that nearly cost me my life. While my body is sure that alcohol is poison, there are times when my mind is still unconvinced. This is largely due to the fact that being a functioning human being is highly stressful. I marvel at the people who do function, without ever stopping to acknowledge the logic, diligence, and sanity that it requires. How remarkable it would be to wake up each morning and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am not crazy. I think that it would be wonderful but ultimately less fulfilling than the life I currently lead. Learning how to exist in the world has been interesting, to say the least. It’s messy and awkward and I tend to damage things (and people) more than I would like to. Regardless, this life is mine, and I’m beginning to understand the necessity, and sometimes even the joys, of reclaiming it as such. I’m 21 years old and I am a paradox made manifest – a strange dichotomy of feeling like I’ve experienced a lifetime’s worth of pain while still embodying the awe and wonderment of a small child who is being exposed to the world for the first time. I’ve begun to pick up the pieces of my shattered life. I’m still not completely whole, but I’m growing closer every day. This is my story:

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

Thanks again for the prize and the opportunity to show off my writing. I felt that I’ve been slacking in the writing department, but this has been truely inspiring, It has once again proven that my sobriety is paying off. I’m excited to get to work with my new computer and to get some screenwriting programs downloaded. I was in the company of some wicked talented people yesterday, and I felt honoured to even be in the top ten.

My only prior experience with Ve’ahavta was getting a smoke off of someone while sleeping under the Bathurst bridge years ago, and it was nice to know the type of things you folks are up to in the city. Meeg’ wetch for everything.

- Jamie C. Rhiness, Winner: People of the Book, CWC 2010

Jamie Rhiness is the 2nd prize winner of our 2010 Creative Writing contest. The prize, sponsored by Board member Henry Greisman and family, was a Netbook computer and an 18 month Internet connection. At the awards presentation, Jamie was inspired by the opportunity to present his writing and looks forward to increasing his screenwriting output with the use of this new-for-him technology.

We all wish Jamie the best of success in his writing endeavours.

By: Jamie Rhiness
Winner: The People of the Book

So you wake up to the street cars rattling above you, as they cross the bridge keeping you sheltered from the rain or snow.

Pigeons painfully cry in vein as they are pecked at by others. The dusty ground is contaminated with PCB’s. You don’t know if it’s this or the exhaust fumes billowing down that cause your nagging morning cough.

If you’re lucky, you have a cigarette, or a swallow of something to keep you from regretting surviving yet another lonely winter night.  Your frozen, shaking hands clumsily load your pack. You’re in a hurry to use the bathroom, and to hydrate yourself before a monster headache begins to catch up with you. The quicker you can get this done, the sooner you can start the whole miserable routine once again. You figure you would be used to it by now. That you’d have toughened over the years. Instead, the cold is hitting you harder. The alcohol is proving much more difficult to keep down, and illness comes upon you more frequently and sticks around longer.

Where is everyone else this winter?

Am I the last of the bridge trolls?

You cast a glance around the bridge to see the ghost shanty town that you once shared with dozens of other kids. Now you share it with three stray cats, and some terminally tortured pigeons.

You take your time walking to the drop in. It’ll be another forty five minutes until it opens and the cold has a harder time sinking into your bones when you’re mobile. As slow as you may be moving with that heavy pack strapped to your shoulders, some citizen is in even less of a rush to get to the office.  He or She knows you’re behind them, but they are having some argument with a spouse over bills. They’re stressed about being down to their last few grand, and might have to cut that trip to the Caribbean short this year.

It must be rough living under a roof.

You play up the pariah “Excuse me, body bugs coming through….” The citizen makes way post-haste and you pounce at your chance to get ahead.

On your way, you check the parking meters for the time, dreading your inevitable early arrival. You grab the city’s free dailies to assist you in passing the time. You skip past the bad news for the horoscopes to find out that you’ll soon find romance with a co-worker, and that finances will shortly take a turn for the better. Good news. The plus seven sleeping bag could always use some help warming up for the night, and you would always enjoy some bank leftover for beer the next day, before the DT’s kick in. Something tells you that this isn’t what the astrologer had in mind, but eh, a guy can dream.

A panhandler sees the butt you’ve found in a frozen snow bank, between your fingers, and asks you for a smoke. You politely inform him that you’re in a like situation, although you consider yourself superior for actually braving the elements, instead of sleeping in some shelter.

Doesn’t he see my pack? Do I not look dirty enough?

You’ve just been mistaken for a middle-class backpacker and not the hard core, hard drinking, hitch hiker you think you are. This irks you. Sure, you’ve shed the punk rock uniform. The patch pants, the piercings, the Mohawk. But shouldn’t something still shine through?

Your mind wanders to more pressing concerns. It’s too cold to use soap and water on the wind shields, so you’ll have to grab a bottle of washer fluid.  Jesus might have been able to turn water into wine, but you’re the only one around that can turn washer fluid into a bottle of malt liquor.

At last you find your way to the colourful alley that is home to the Youth Link Inner City. One of the places that has kept you alive throughout the years, even at the times you didn’t care to be. Inside is food, a shower, and dry socks. You can keep in touch with friends and family over the internet, and give someone a call. Still, outside stands a group of shaking shelter kids, using language just as colourful to describe their disdain for the “cold hearted” staff, blatantly refusing to open the shelter twenty minutes early.

You shake your head at the fact that they awoke with a warm toilet readily available. They spent a night in a bed that would be more comfortable if a guy could sleep through the whining, or the fighting. The feeble shoving matches and tough talk sparked by shady drug deals, or some kid with something to prove. You think about the squeegee punks. Hitchhikers and train hoppers fighting for fun. We call it sparring. Of course, where are they now? We were the bullied, not the bullies, so nothing about this kid impresses. It’s all drama, street soap opera. The mindless distraction that keeps a person from knowing their real enemies, the courts, the cops, the government, and the rich trying their best to get out of paying their wages.

The clicking sound of a lock unlatching signals that staff is now prepared for another thankless day of complaints and verbal abuse.

The two quickest on the draw rush to the computer. Another set, to spend a solid half hour in the washrooms. Staff plead with the rest to sign the stats sheet, explaining that this is how the drop-in keeps its doors open. A handful of people may listen.

Inside you have all kinds of people from all sorts of backgrounds, punks, metal heads, hip hoppers. Former dealers , former users trying to stay away from making money or current users trying to sleep off days of making money. There are kids killing time until the shelter opens, and kids killing time until a dealer turns on their phone.

Then there’s the odd squeegee kid waiting for the cops to leave the Queen-Spadina corner. It’s a mismatch of people that on the street shouldn’t work, but for survival sake does. Staff tries their best to keep our personal prejudices and old beefs from escalating into full-out physical conflict; on most days they miraculously succeed.

I tried to spend as little time in these drop-in’s as possible. If you can’t already tell, I have a lot of pride. By ten or eleven, I’d be out the door, making a couple more bottles, than getting drunk in a park or alleyway, until all could be forgotten. Then I’d wake up under a bridge to start it all over again.

I started as a teen in a small town drinking, thumbing, or just doing anything at my disposal to kill the boredom. By winter ’07, nothing cut it, and I just couldn’t take another night under the bridge, or another run down the Trans-Canada.

Still, an extreme transition like this would take six months for me to grow into. I’m leaving a life I’ve travelled tens of thousands of kilometers for, had three lifetimes worth of fun, but also lost ten years and more friends and loved ones than I can count.

I had to give trust a try, and I had to give shelters a try (now I realize that shelters can be a lot worse than any bridge I’ve stayed under. As a matter of fact, I’ve been in correctional facilities with more personality and less restrictions). It’s within this time that I took part in the peer program at Youth Link Inner City. It’s because of this that I got to actually know some of the kids that I had been misjudging all of these years.

I learned a lot about myself and a bit about the world outside the one I’ve been living for so long. I’ve even been meditating on the fact that those citizens might actually have genuine problems, regardless of the size and location of roofs they live under.

I’ve hung up my squeegee, and shed my ambivalence about wanting no more than some company to share my misery with, and some leftover bank for the ten o’clock beer run.

So now I lay on our new couch by the window, on a humid Sunday afternoon. After my girlfriend and I make supper and do the dishes, we’ll take in a movie, and eat ice cream, before turning in for the night.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably head in for my shift a bit early to grab the free dailies that will tell me to expect a new budding romance and that my finances will take a turn for the worse. I’ll ignore this as always, choosing instead to strike up a conversation with some of the folks waiting out front, who always ask me how the new place is coming along, and that they are happy for my girlfriend and I.

They’ll tell me about their new job or apartment and I’ll continue to be amazed at how hard we all try, no matter how hopeless the papers or charity advertisements at times makes us sound. I’ll start one of my few remaining shifts a little saddened that a part of my life is ending, but I’ll be comforted with the fact that a place like Youth Link Inner City exists to help keep the street kids fed, clothed, safe, and sometimes even alive, even at the times we didn’t care to be.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

By: Heather-Ann Michie
Grand Prize Winner

Like a leaf trembling in the breeze, I find the courage to get off my mattress, leave my empty place, and head out into another cold wintry day, even though I feel down.

This day, I have change for the bus.  People are staring at me.  Maybe my coat needs cleaning or my clothes need freshening.  I look down.  But, I get to go to my “home-away-from-home,” my “family-away-from-family, “The Office”, the A.C.S.A. [Agincourt Community Service Association] drop-in shelter.

As a baby bird is pushed from its nest by its parents, I find the courage to come by myself as a young female from a Mediterranean climate into cold “Scarberia”.  Was it too much, too soon?

As usual, staff greets me and I greet the guys and my gal pal, “Hi.”  I check my voicemail, leave Easter messages for my three kids and call my other gal pal.  I get some cereal, toast, and a hot drink, sit on the couch and read my Metro.  I play solitaire to focus, check my e-mail, and send an Easter e-card to my mom back home.  I watch a movie, if there is one, while I wait for a hot lunch.  We had chocolate ice cream for dessert.  Strange, but I seem to be thawing out inside.

Like the matchbox girl freezing in the cold, I find the courage to reach out to connect somehow.  This day, the guys have all had a hard night – some on the streets, some in their empty places – as check day is a few days away.

Suddenly, I watch as one guy buys two cigarettes for two quarters from a second guy.  The second guy needs the quarters for a phone call to his mom later on tonight.  This exchange makes them both happy.  I hope the new staff member, Melanie, comes in soon.  She always has a generous smile, a warm hug, and a kind word to give [if wanted].  She’s here!  I feel as if I am warming up inside.

As a canvas is being filled with colours from the artist’s palette forming an oil painting, I find the courage to send out an e-resume, make some cold calls, and prepare for a job fair.

Now, a stable influence, Christina works away quietly, calmly and with a Mona Lisa smile in the food bank.  Maybe I will ask her if she can spare a few tea bags. I am uncertain about getting a free flu shot.  What if I get sick?  I will not be able to leave my mattress, or eat, or see anyone.  A visiting staff, Sandy, helps me begin to apply for OW [Ontario Works] on-line.  I am so tired of hiding from my children that I have no real income as my partner would not let me work. Recently, he left for parts unknown so I can start over again, starting with OW and some training.

Like a ballerina gliding across the stage, I find the courage to hold myself erect and float over to the ladies room.  The soap is nice – soft, fragrant, and luxuriously bubbly – like hand cream.  It feels so good to wash my hands and my “undies.”  I always have clean hands and nails, no matter what else I have to let go of.  I wish ACSA had a washer and a dryer to go with the shower.

This past Christmas, somebody left a box of toys.  One toy was a beautiful, new, fluffy, white, stuffed animal.  I grabbed it and took it home to put away as a gift for my little grandchild’s upcoming birthday.  I did not like my children to know what I go through.  They have their own lives to live.  They think everything is fine, the same as when their dad – the accountant – and I were married, had a four-bedroom house, two cars, and they went to a private academy.  I just want all of them to be happy and feel normal.  [Is that just a setting on a washer?]

As a warrior after inspection, mess hall, and going off on maneuvers, I am motivated, fed, and strengthened to face the rest of my day, whatever that might bring my way.

Today, I find the courage to smile, hold my head up high and look strangers in their eyes.  I find the courage to try, learn, and grow. I find the courage to succeed.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

By: Leif Hernborg
Winner: The Ahad Ha’am Prize

My name is Leif. I am 43 years old and homeless for the second time in my life.

I am currently fortunate enough to be in residence at a city-run shelter called “Fort York” which gives 60-90 males opportunities to work and save money and keeps a lot of us from falling through the cracks to darker venues in homelessness. I became officially homeless on November 3, 2009, yet knew inside the hallways of my soul long before.

I have now been separated for six years with two children, which I proudly support, living with my ex-wife. For five years, I lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment. After I was laid off in the construction industry and without income to pay rent, I politely received a pre-eviction notice under my door. I soon realized that I could not survive much longer and instead of fighting with my landlord, I tried vainly to look at the positives of living out of a hockey bag, hoping to recapture some vigor to a defeated heart.

I almost looked forward to escaping the quickness and insanity of today’s information-obsessive throngs and disappear to anywhere but here, pretending to be somewhere I could be someone else.

Reality can be a stomach-churning event rushing feelings and emotions like the residuals of an unexpected punch to the stomach. The evening I left my barren apartment, I did so late in the evening depositing my worn-out key into the broken mailbox, pausing to pull free the name tag I had placed above my mail slot, my name printed in subdued awkward-typed letters. I placed this in my top pocket as though officially erasing my five years of occupancy by hiding the evidence.

Closing the front door, the squeaking hinges bid me farewell as I threw my heavy hockey bag, oddly emblazed with the word “champion”, over my left shoulder, and sucked in the cold November air which I nervously exhaled through my warm nose. And without looking behind me, I stepped into a cold November night and for once forgot all about rent. Homelessness can be different for those of us not really encumbered by addictions, nor too cruelly reduced to depressed states of shock.

I have come to enjoy life’s curveballs as they seem to exist to improve my catching and pitching skills.

But I must impart that I have lived an interesting life and as odd as all the years have been I have always viewed the world before me with great curiosity.

Such are the ever-winding flows of the mighty river of our lives. We have no way to sway her course though we try by building walls strong and solid to bend her to our will. And as we grasp at our plunder greedily, it pours from between our fingers and escapes at our very feet, carelessly pooling and returning from whence it came, driving us to the brink of madness as we collapse into the river maiden’s outstretched hands and be swallowed by her wet embrace. Sometimes we rest for eternity entangled in her dark arms among the roots and ebbs of the river floor.

And so it has been for me today as I stop fighting and start seeing our daily miracle of the arrival of the sun and of it returning to rest. And through the cracks I fall afraid and eager to see another new day. I see the world go by my bespeckled eyes, and I see an ocean of faces before me each so very unique. And in each I see a grain of true measure. In the darkness of our lives the sun’s miraculous displacement of moving shadows permits us to move on to safer pastures and to escape all of this, daydreams offer us sanctuaries of wishes we can share with few, if any.

Oh how I wish I could daydream in reality a day away from all this craziness, seated upon a quiet lake, thoughts wandering freely in an old canoe as loons swim below my paddle teasing me to join them. I hear the rustling of fall leaves so orange and yellow that float past me so closely that they kiss my cheeks with faint smooches. Oh how I wish I could daydream away a day with my children as I catch glimpses of their smiling faces through flashes of sunlight that reflect like tiny mirrors from the ripples of a tickled lake. Oh to walk a forest trail and to be nowhere, the deer tiptoe upon the forest floor as though in velvet slippers, parting the ferns with their soft noses.

Thus I ventured forth from my ghostly dark and dusty neighbourhood, my boots silently leading the way, as I headed off to the safety of a $50 a night hotel room. To keep reality at bay long enough to close a new door behind me to face myself, to feel alone and wishing for once things could be different instead of disappearing into the vastness of this city as it once again engulfed me completely. I had two days in a room that hadn’t changed since 1973. Even the cockroaches wore flared jeans and spaceboots.

My hockey bag on the single bed was my only lover, possessing my disguises to look normal in public. Photographs of my children were concealed inside an old heavy sweater as though their unblinking eyes could witness their father’s unusual attempts at existence. A hidden existence they knew nothing about. Trying to relax, I sat in a multicoloured bathtub, knees folded as it was big enough for my backside and my two feet. I reviewed my Tom Sawyer fantasies that have exited with me my whole life. Mark Twain unraveled a life I wished I could encapsulate through well-thumbed books which I read and re-read over and over, a dream I have tried to capture in times where I was crumbling apart like this day. Wonderful ideals of traveling life on the road, skipping from town to town, surviving on sheer guts and carelessness, tending the ever-present evening fire while warm sustenance simmered upon lazy flames. In all its true glory life sometimes introduces you to the unknown consequences of our answers to being alive.

Rebellion, rejection, addictions, mental illness, abuse, isolation, fear, cheat, thief, grief, and reality. Although I did try and try hard at keeping under the radar, there have been but fleeting moments of success, then it seems a slide ride into the arms of a society that wanted to break me apart. And at 43 years of age, I have acquired a cynical look into the world I see beyond my tired feet. I see everyone moving about as though on some divine mission, wrapped up in cell phone conversations, cars effortlessly negotiating streets in elegant technology adding to the background noise and vibrations of a city so full of life, yet with so many closed doors. The thought of succumbing to a shelter once again had me frozen in disbelief. The stuffy hotel room pushed me to the cold streets to wander aimlessly. Those who begged for spare change from motley corners paused to look at me as my face betrayed the sorrows I imparted whilst my heart beat out the rhythm of a poker stare.

The blanket of semi-security that once hung upon my fettered shoulders was now gone. And quickly.

And so appropriately, it began to rain in light cold spurts. I could feel the intrusiveness of the wet melting drops as they explored my neck causing an ever so slight chill to the pit of my stomach. It awakened in my elastic soul the recognition that I have so much to be truly grateful for, as I pass the beggar whose hollows eyes and sunken cheeks humble my awkward stares.

And yet he smiles a broken smile as I drop my last free toonies into possibly one of my own recently discarded Tim Horton’s to-go cups. We look at each other and as our true eyes meet, I am frightened to find that I have always been a step away from desperation and oddly electrified by the chances I have been blessed to receive on the roulette wheel I call life, be they good or bad. Everyday, I am blessed to be alive.

* * *

The Creative Writing Contest is part of Ve’ahavta’s Homeless Initiative department. Every year, we distribute hundreds of packages into the street and through shelters, containing a sign-up form, a pad of paper, a pen, and a self-addressed envelope. We ask people to write a poem, a song, an autobiography, a recipe used to survive on the street… They have the option of writing a fiction or non-fiction piece. The possibilities are endless.

We are proud to announce the inauguration of The Ve’ahavta Street Academy (VSA), a school for people living on or near the street. VSA was designed and will be overseen by the talented, Theresa Schrader, the winner of Ve’ahavta’s Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless in 2005.

Ve’ahavta is interested in presenting our vision of VSA to a family or individual interested in endowing this unique educational program. Please call Kirill Zaretsky at
416-964-7698 ext. 22.

We are also interested in hearing from passionate, creative and innovative teachers (Philosophy, Art, Life Skills). Please call Avrum Rosensweig at 416-964-7698 ext. 13.

Click here for more information about VSA.

Is it better to make a difference on your own or with a group? Does one make more of an impact?

Thank you to all the participants, donors, and volunteers of the 2010 Great T.O. Challenge! With your support this year’s event raised over $50,000 for Ve’ahavta’s homeless outreach initiatives.

A special thank you to the organizing committee of the GTO Challenge: Fran Grundman & David Taras (Co-Chairs), Maura Cooperberg, Shauna Merkur, Lisa Richman, Nancy Soberano, Mark Stein, Karen Stern, Sherri Taras, Carolyn Tucker (Committee Members).

Ve’ahavta would like to express our gratitude to all the community members and groups for their enthusiasm and support for the Kinder Kit Project. In April and May we collected supplies and donations to send 3,000 Kinder Kits to Israel. The kits are now on their way to Israel so that needy children will be able to receive the educational supplies before the next school year.
In 2010, our goal is to distribute 15,000 Kinder Kits to children in need locally and internationally. To help us achieve this goal, please consider sponsoring a Kinder Kit for $18 or collecting school supplies to donate to the project.

Please contact josh.hacker@veahavta.org for further details.

Click here to sponsor a Kinder Kit today!

Thank you to all of the organizations who supported the Israel Kinder Kit Project:

• Holy Blossom Temple
• Beth Tzedec Congregation
• Leo Baeck Jewish Day School
• Robbins Hebrew Academy
• Bayview Corridor Synagogues

Kinder Kits in Zimbabwe!

Gena Kontakos was in Zimbabwe in April to help deliver 1,500 Kinder Kits to children through the Salvation Army Howard Hospital in Glendale, Zimbabwe. As  you can see from the pictures below, the students loved the educational supplies they received!

We are experiencing a higher than usual volume of donations and supplies. We need volunteers to sign-up for our on-call volunteer list to help with deliveries of supplies to us and shipments of donations out.

Please email volunteerinfo@veahavta.org to sign up.

Ve’ahavta will be recruiting up to 4 volunteers and 1 site coordinator for a two week placement in Israel this June as part of our Kinder Kit distribution project.  Volunteers will also be volunteering with Hazon Yeshaya Humanitarian Network in Jerusalem, assisting with programs that provide support to Israel’s poorest citizens.  We are looking for volunteers to be in Israel between June 15 and 30^th, 2010.

Volunteer fees are tax deductible and will be subsidized.  Ve’ahavta will coordinate flights, accommodations, and volunteer placements.

For more details and to apply, contact volunteerinfo@veahavta.org

It is with great excitement that we announce Ve’ahavta’s Coffee House event for its 9^th Annual Creative Writing Contest for People Living On or Near the Streets of Toronto and Vancouver.

Please join us at this *free event, meet our winning contestants, and listen to them read their riveting stories from life on the streets and in shelters. All are welcome so invite your friends and family, and include in your organization’s mailing lists and e-newsletters if applicable!

Event details are included in the event flyer and below:

Date: Sunday May 30^th, 2010

Time: 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Location: U of T’s Hart House (Music Room), 7 Hart House Circle. The closest subway station is Queen’s Park, and parking is available on King’s College Circle and Tower Road.

Please don’t hesitate to e-mail or call me with any inquiries. I look forward to seeing you on May 30^th!

In the past few months, I have been a volunteer at the Lita and Mikey Homework Club in Regent Park. As a tutor and a mentor, I have developed multiple connections with my students and watched them grow and succeed. One grade five student I was working with brought an assignment to the Homework Club which was to deliver a public speech to his classmates. For several weeks, we polished the speech together and talked about ideas. The end result was a speech about sneakers, and the role they play in the experience of his peers. My student talked about shoes as status symbols, how they must not be a way to make friends, about powerful advertising and child labour practices. I was very proud of him. In our next meeting, he was excited and told me that he won first place in his class and will now deliver his speech in front of the whole school. A shy but bright kid has gained confidence that will sustain him for years to come.

- Ve’ahavta tutor, The Lita and Mikey Newcomers Homework Club in Regent Park

I now know that in Cuba, there lives a vibrant and passionate Jewish community. With less than 1,500 Jewish people across the entire country, the Cuban Jews show the meaning of Tikun Olam. On Wednesday afternoon, the women in the community join together to make Challah for each family, while on Friday night the community gathers to share in a Shabbat, followed by a Havadallah ceremony on Saturday.

Our group has been lucky enough to witness Yom Hashoa in Cuba. The young people in the community organized a memorial which included readings of the memoirs of Anne Frank and dancing. Prior to leaving for Cuba, I participated in a Toronto memorial for Yom Hashoa. In that ceremony, in a community with approximately 200,000 Jews, a few hundred people attended. While Havana, a community with 900 had almost as many participants.

The Cuban community has further revealed the true meaning of unity. Their passion and dedication to daily Mitzvot is contagious. Whether they are providing medication, encouraging the youth to partake in traditions or providing nurturing care to the elderly, this community enables each other and protects one another. It is truly inspiring.

- Alexandra Bronfman, 23, Toronto, ON
Mission Chair of Yaldeinu’s Emerging Leaders Development Mission to Cuba

One week ago, I left Toronto really excited to visit Cuba for the first time, to see the sights of Havana and to spend some time with the small Jewish community that we had heard so much about. One week later, I am about to leave Cuba, after visiting for the first time, seeing the sights of Havana and spending some time with one of the most incredible Jewish communities in the world.

I feel humbled to have been able to get to know some of the people in this very small, yet very dynamic and vibrant Jewish community. Each person we met was so friendly and warm, so welcoming and so genuinely happy to host us in their homes, their centre and their country. From William Miller, the vice president of the Patronato and the young leaders of the community, who made us feel like royalty, to the people who we went to visit and take care packages of medicine, food and clothes to, who so proudly took us on tours of their very humble homes, invited us in for Cuban coffee and cookies, and gave us hugs and kisses when we left. Each person I have met and spent time with over the course of this week has left an indelible mark in my heart and in my mind.

The Cuban Jewish Community can show the rest of the Jewish world what it means to be totally committed and dedicated to Judaism. The love and passion for being Jewish that the members of this community portray is far beyond anything I’ve ever seen. The Cuban Jewish community may be small in numbers but in love for, passion and commitment to being Jewish, they are larger than life!

- Romy Pilarski, 28. Toronto, ON
Participant in Yaldeinu’s Emerging Leaders Development Mission to Cuba

This mission has been significant for me because it has not only drastically changed my perspective on what’s important in my own life, but it has also changed my view on what it means to be Jewish and the importance of belonging to and participating in the Jewish community on a local and global scale.

One of the many great qualities that I have come to realize about the global Jewish community is that no matter where you are on the planet, Jewish people all have a common bond that makes us feel comfortable and safe in a very short period of time. Jewish people can identify with each other beyond language barriers and develop instant rapport with one another despite a lack of easily identifiable physical and cultural commonalities. Within several days of arriving in Cuba I have made a number of new Jewish friends, learned about what it means for them to be Jewish, as well as seen and listened to some of the obstacles that many of them have overcome in order to practice Judaism in Cuba. It is incredible to me that many members of the Jewish youth want to be Jewish and want to be part of this special community regardless of what their parents think or tell them, and will put enormous amounts of effort to engage not only their peers, but the aging Jewish community as well. They realize that it is up to them to carry on the traditions that are fading fast from a society that has only recently been able to freely practice religion.

Today I traveled around the suburbs of Havana delivering essential supplies to Jewish families that either do not have the money to pay for them or do not have the physical capability to go and get them. It was an experienced that humbled me.

The Cuban Jewish community has clearly been evolving and growing in recent history, however there is still much that is required to sustain a long term Jewish community. They are heavily reliant on donations and it will be a number of years before they can be a self-reliant Jewish community. Youth educating other youth in the traditional practices of Judaism is an important step that is being taken to sustain the religion here in Cuba and should continue as long as possible. I am glad that we have come on this mission to learn and help and I hope that others will travel here and realize how important and special it is to be a part of the Jewish religion.

- Josh Gurza, 25, Toronto, ON
Participant in Yaldeinu’s Emerging Leaders Development Mission to Cuba

Hear what Ve’ahavta volunteers have learned and experienced in their travels, both local and abroad, in Voices from the Field, a collection of stories and testimonials. The three testimonials below are reflections from participants of Yaldeinu’s Emerging Leaders Development Mission to Cuba.

One of the many great qualities that I have come to realize about the global Jewish community is that no matter where you are on the planet, Jewish people all have a common bond that makes us feel comfortable and safe in a very short period of time.
- Josh Gurza

Read more…

The Cuban community has further revealed the true meaning of unity. Their passion and dedication to daily Mitzvot is contagious.
- Alexandra Bronfman

Read more…

Each person we met was so friendly and warm, so welcoming and so genuinely happy to host us in their homes, their centre and their country.
- Romy Pilarski

Read more…

Repairing the World (Tikun Olam) Through Volunteerism, Kindness & Building Global Bridges

Ve’ahavta: Canada’s Central Address for Tikun Olam

VE’AHAVTA NEWS

Kinder Kit Project Update

Ve’ahavta would like to express our gratitude to the community for your enthusiasm and support in the Kinder Kit Project. Collectively, you have sponsored 4,356 Kinder Kits to date!

Our main channels of distribution for kinder kits in Toronto over the next year will be through the following agenices; Jewish Family and Child Services, Tomchei Shabbos, and Children’s Aid (Canada).

In 2010, our goal is to distribute 15,000 kinder kits to children in need locally and internationally. To help us achieve this goal, please consider sponsoring a Kinder Kit for $18 or collecting school supplies to donate to the project.

Please contact josh.hacker@veahavata.org for further details.

Click here to sponsor a Kinder Kit

Recent Kinder Kit Distributions
On April 7 and 8 March of the Living took 300 Kinder Kits to Poland to be distributed to underpriviled Jewish and non-Jewish children.

Volunteer Gena Kontakos is in Zimbabwe distributing 1,600 Kinder Kits to the Kenyamba Primary and Secondary Schools. Please stay tuned for more info about this program’s amazing successes!

Upcoming Kinder Kit Project events:
April 22 – USDS Do Without Day
April 25 – Holy Blossom Mitzvah Day
May 2 – Beth Tzedec Mitzvah Day

In May Ve’ahavta will be sending a second shipment of 1,500 Kinder Kits to Zimbabwe.

This summer 5,000 Kinder Kits will be shipped and distributed in Israel. Please contact us if you are interested in being part of the distribution team on the ground in Israel!

Ve’ahavta in Vancouver

From March 7 to 10, 2010, Eric Cisterna (Outreach Initiatives Coordinator) and Jacqueline Stein (CWC Coordinator) travelled to Vancouver to meet with local leaders and spread the word about Ve’ahavta. Eric and Jacqueline went to the Downtown East Side of Vancouver to see first hand what was being done there.  They connected with great local workers from many different organizations to understand the local community and see the hidden gems that are hiding in Vancouver’s shadow.

The visit to Vancouver was also an opportunity to take the Ve’ahavta’s Creative Writing Contest national for the first time since its inception. The Creative Writing Contest (CWC) is in its 9^th year and we decided to break some more records by expanding our listening ear and take in more stories, songs and thoughts from the west coast and carry it across Canada.

GETTING TO KNOW US

Kirill Zaretsky – Director of Development

Kirill Zaretsky came to Canada as a young Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union, and had it not been for the assistance the Jewish community, he and family would not have had the opportunity to live in freedom.

With freedom comes responsibility. And responsibility leads to Tzedakah. For over a decade Kirill has raised millions of dollars for institutions dedicated to improving the quality of life of those who are the most vulnerable in society. In his role as Director of Development for Ve’ahavta, he brings the expertise gained working for other organizations to his work at Ve’ahavta.

A mere three generations ago, most Jews lived in poverty. Now the Jewish community of North America, though hard work and study have become leaders in society. As a fundraiser Kirill is constantly amazed at the level of charitable giving by our community. This makes him confident that the Jewish community will continue to play an increasingly important role in making the world a better place to live. As Ve’ahavta will be placing a greater focus on our educational initiatives in the near future, we challenge people to consider the kind of world we would live in, if every child had the right to learn; for this is in essence the Jewish way.

If you would like to learn more about Ve’ahavta or make a contribution, you can reach him at 416-964-7698 x.22 or kirill@veahavta.org.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Save the date for Ve’ahavta’s most exciting STARRY NIGHTS yet!
Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Ve’ahavta is thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for STARRY NIGHTS 2010 is internationally acclaimed humanitarian activist, Sir Bob Geldof.

The M.C. for the evening is the hilarious and talented David Shore (Creator, Writer, and Executive Producer for the Emmy Award winning television show House).

Once again Ve’ahavta will present distinctive Tikun Olam Awards to many special and deserving tikun olam heroes of our time.

More information to come! Please save the date.

Are you up for the Challenge? May 16th 2010

Register your team now for the 2010 Great T.O. Challenge! After last year’s astounding success (volunteer teams raised $60,000 for Ve’ahavta homeless intiatives expansion project), and the hype leading up to this year’s event, we do expect to reach registration capacity quickly.

Sign up a team today for this thrilling and unique in-car scavenger hunt adventure to raise funds for the homeless men and women living on the streets of Toronto.

Click here to register NOW!

Varsity Jews: In Technicolour

U of T Jewish a cappella in concert

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 7:30pm
Beth Torah Congregation, 47 Glenbrook Ave.
All proceeds go to Ve’ahavta: the Canadian Jewish Humanitarian & Relief Committee
Click here to purchase tickets

Ve’ahavta’s Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless

On Sunday May 30^th, Ve’ahavta will be hosting its ninth annual Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless at Hart House on the University of Toronto campus. Mia Farrow will be one of the judges this year and the event will include top prizes being given to the best submissions. Please join us at this incredible event as we encourage those submitting to reflect on their own soulfulness and creativity, and find their way off the street. For more information visit the Ve’ahavta website, or contact Jacqueline Stein at Jackie@veahavta.org.

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

Seeking: Special volunteer with certification in food handling to facilitate and supervise volunteer groups making sandwiches for the homeless
Where: dates are flexible in accordance with your schedule
When: April-May

Vitamin Drive for children in Guyana

Seeking: people to collect vitamins or start a vitamin drive
Where: vitamins will be distributed to children in Guyana who need vitamin supplements to stay healthy and strong
When: NOW!!!

The Great TO Challenge on May 16

Seeking: volunteers for day of event
Where: CHAT, Wallenberg Campus
When: May 16

The Lita and Mikey Homework Club Programs

Seeking: Volunteer Supervisors
Where: Ledbury, Regent Park, and Evangel Hall
When: Fall 2010

Youth Breakfast Club program, sponsored by TNT

Seeking: Volunteers to serve breakfast
Where: Evangel Hall (552 Adelaide Street West)
When: every Thursday morning from 7:30 to 8:30am

Community Dinners

Seeking: Volunteers to host and recruit for one of our community dinners for the homeless
Where: Evangel Hall (552 Adelaide Street West)
When: July 11, July 18, August 1, August 29

Guyana’s Medicine and Health Education

Seeking: Individuals interested in volunteering their services to a community-based medical development project in Region 7, Guyana. Specifically looking for Physicians, nurses, midwives, social workers, public health specialists/educators, family planners, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, and support workers.
Where: Guyana, South America
When: June 6th-June 20th, 2010

Mali

Ve’ahavta is partnering with Project Muso Ladamunen and The Faith Act Fellows to raise funds for a community based malaria project in Yirimadjo, Mali!

For all volunteer inquiries, please contact our Volunteer Desk at 416.964.7698 x 16 or by email at volunteerinfo@veahavta.org

VOICES FROM THE FIELD

In the past few months, I have been a volunteer at the Lita and Mikey Homework Club in Regent Park. As a tutor and a mentor, I have developed multiple connections with my students and watched them grow and succeed. One grade five student I was working with brought an assignment to the Homework Club which was to deliver a public speech to his classmates. For several weeks, we polished the speech together and talked about ideas. The end result was a speech about sneakers, and the role they play in the experience of his peers. My student talked about shoes as status symbols, how they must not be a way to make friends, about powerful advertising and child labour practices. I was very proud of him. In our next meeting, he was excited and told me that he won first place in his class and will now deliver his speech in front of the whole school. A shy but bright kid has gained confidence that will sustain him for years to come.

- Ve’ahavta tutor, The Lita and Mikey Newcomers Homework Club in Regent Park

Volunteer Now!

SPEAKING TIKUN OLAM

Poverty is poverty – suffering is suffering, no matter where in the world you look. The thing is, when it looks so different, how does one know where do we begin?

Click here to write your response and see what others have to say.

VOLUNTEER CORNER

I have volunteered with Ve’ahavta countless times and each and every 6:30 outing is an incredibly gratifying experience.

When I volunteer on the Van, I am amazed by everyone I interact with. Each and every driver and fellow volunteer exemplifies excellence in striving to just do the right thing. To do what you would want someone to do for you if you were in their situation, to offer a smile and a friendly greeting. To allow everyone to be treated like their a human being. When I come home from a long day with Ve’ahavta I know that I have given everything I have and it has been selfless. It helps to keep me grounded, and appreciate what I have. Most importantly, I feel like I am being a role model. My family and friends inquire as to why I’m so exhausted and I proudly respond that today, I did the right thing, today I helped to perfect the world. By leading by example and being a guiding light for others, the positive, viral impact is enormous.

Thank-you Ve’ahavta for reminding me of who I am and what I should strive to be.
- Wesley Slater, Ve’ahavta MJRH volunteer

FEATURED CORPORATE SPONSOR

FOOD & SUPPLY DONATION REQUEST

Ve’ahavta’s new Youth Breakfast Club program, sponsored by TNT, is in need of food supplies. Please let us know if you can help us secure the following items on a weekly basis;

• yogurt
• cheese strings
• cereal
• Fruit
• Muffins
• Granola/Snack bars
• Juice boxes or small bottles
• Milk boxes – small ones

Please contact Eric Cisterna at eric@veahavta.org

Follow Ve’ahavta on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/VeahavtaNews

Poverty is poverty – suffering is suffering, no matter where in the world you look. The thing is, when it looks so different, how does one know where do we begin?

Through Canadian Feed the Children, Ve’ahavta transferred $30,000 in much needed funds to Haiti to purchase what was most critically needed: water, food and shelter supplies.

Read the full report here: Haiti Update March 30, 2010

Jameson Diezer is a victim of the earthquake that occurred on January 12th in Port-au-Prince. His parents died when the earthquake struck and he was found under the rubble, with a severe head injury. His parents were gone, and he was alone. Learning about the boy, Alice opened her heart and her home to young Jameson. He is now residing at House of Hope orphanage, where he receives the medical and psychological care he needs to cope with the trauma of his loss.

Since coming to the orphanage, James has been able to socialize with the other children and is now less troubled then when he first arrived. This 8-year-old boy loves to play soccer and hopes to become an engineer when he grows up.

Learn more about the House of Hope orphanage and Ve’ahavta’s involvement.

We are doing a Children’s Multivitamin Drive for Guyana and are urging our volunteers to donate bottles of children’s multivitamins to Ve’ahavta. These will be distributed to children living in remote communities in Guyana who need vitamin supplementation. For more information, volunteers can contact sarah@veahavta.org or 416-964-7698 x 15.

Photos from Ve’ahavta’s most recent trip to Guyana are online. Take a look here.

Our Guyana project is a development project that focuses on the long term goal of building local capacity of health care service providers and empowering local communities to take control over their health and well being.

The next team will travel to Guyana from June 6-20^th.

Read about volunteer Leya Aronson’s experiences in Guyana.

See the photos:

www.veahavta.org/index.php/our-projects/
www.veahavta.org/index.php/our-projects/local-programs/
www.veahavta.org/index.php/our-projects/local-programs/homeless-initiatives/
www.veahavta.org/index.php/our-projects/local-programs/homeless-initiatives/frequently-asked-questions-about-homelessness/

Ve’ahavta needs a special volunteer with their certification in food handling to facilitate and supervise a class of 20-40 making sandwiches for the homeless. Event to be held some time in April-May, dates are flexible in accordance with your schedule! Interested volunteers, please email Tessa at volunteerinfo@veahavta.org

The time I spent on the street with Ve’ahavta’s ‘Three Days’ initiative was something very special. I will take it with me for life and I was/am honoured to be a part of it.

I was walking down Bloor street a couple of weeks ago and passed by a woman panhandling on the street. My first instinct was to acknowledge her presence with a nod and keep going. Then something inside me told me to turn around, which is exactly what I did. I walked right up to her and said, “may I buy you a coffee?” (we were right next to a Second Cup). She gleefully exclaimed, “yes!” and then asked me if she could come into the cafe with me. It was a very nice exchange between two Torontonians.

Similarly, I was at the Eaton Centre last week, and ran into Mike (the young Schizophrenic man who joined us at the memorial for the homeless). He was having an episode, talking and laughing to himself as he opened a CD in front of HMV. I wondered whether I should approach him and then decided that I absolutely should. I said “hello!” and he recognized me right away and was very aware and “with it”. We walked and chatted and I told him that one of the most difficult things about coming off of the streets for me was transitioning back into my life and the privileges that I and many of those in my social circle are accustomed to. Mike astutely asked, “but wasn’t it more difficult for you to transition back into your life after returning from places such as Brazil and India?” (I was taken aback that he actually remembered where I had traveled to!). My response was, “no, Mike, because this city, Toronto, is my home and my community. When I travel, I can leave, but the people I met on the streets, these are my neighbours and my neighbourhoods, and I can’t just leave here. This is my reality.”

- Jacqueline Stein, Ve’ahavta Volunteer

Written by Machla Abramovitz
Reprinted from Mishpacha

It is rare that one meets an individual whose deep commitment to healing the poor knows few boundaries in regard to people or place. Such was the case when I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Leya Aronson. Every year this frum, spunky grandmother packs one suitcase and carry-on and embarks upon a two-week journey that can only be described both literally and figuratively as being somewhat off the beaten track. Leaving her family and her comfortable home in Toronto, Ontario, behind, she boards a plane whose final destination is the rainforest of Guyana, South America, located in some of the remotest regions of the Amazon. She does so in order to bring her unique medical expertise to the aid of the Amerindian natives living there.

Leya Aronson is a nurse with a specialization in burn trauma and she has been working in this capacity for most of her married life. Although she is within the range of retirement age, she has not diminished even one iota from her extremely hectic schedule. She divides her time between working for a pediatric immunologist and working as a nurse at the North York General Hospital. In her “spare time” she ministers to the frum community including giving palliative care to those in need. This is a service she considers to be a zechus (privilege). Her schedule often requires her to work overnight. It is this energy and dedication that qualifies her to be one of many medical volunteers participating in a unique program organized by Ve’ahavta, a non-profit Jewish humanitarian and relief group founded in Canada that provides medical assistance throughout the world to the poorest of the poor. In addition, this organization also brings relief by means of financing and sending personnel to regions struck by natural disaster or terrorism. When in December 2008, Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Hospital found itself at the front lines of an overwhelming barrage of mortars originating from Gaza, Ve’ahavta responded with precisely this kind of aid.

To Aronson, the yearly trips to the Amazon represent a unique draw: “The work is like a magnet. Once you experience it, it’s extremely hard to say no,” she told Mishpacha. In describing the precise nature of this pull, Aronson describes a region and a people that are far removed from our own environment and it is precisely these differences, she says, that have taught her many lessons, but especially, about the evil inherent in poverty. “I’ve come to understand first hand how poverty can degrade and make people feel that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. When you do something for these people, they are so happy, so grateful.”

So what is it like for an Orthodox woman to leave behind a safe, loving milieu and venture forth into what is essentially an uncultivated, somewhat primitive environment? To answer this question and others, Aronson sat down with Mishpacha and began delineating for us a rare insider’s perspective of aboriginal life in these remote villages that are situated along river banks. What she described are indigenous peoples who live very much in alliance with and in awe of nature, as well as her own personal experiences that often border upon wonder and at times, total surprise. For example when, quite unexpectedly, the Chassidic singer Matisyahu’s reggae music reverberated from a lone kiosk in one isolated village, she was quite astonished. Ultimately, however, the opportunity for Aronson to give her healing skills to a people who “have nothing and expect nothing and yet are so appreciative” strongly motivates her to continue what she is doing. This is a quality she believes she inherited from her paternal grandmother Mrs. Rivka Rochel Hochman, who, widowed at a young age with eight small children to support, still found it in her heart to extend chesed and tzedakah to Jews and non-Jews who were in dire financial need.

Guyana is situated on the north-east corner of South America. An intact rainforest covers 80% of its land. It is also a densely forested country teeming with wildlife. What immediately greets visitors is a kaleidoscope of magnificent colors and sounds. This is the natural environment of toucans and macaws, parrot-like birds that are renowned for their remarkable plumage. Free-growing orchids are scarce in some areas but plentiful in others. Mighty rivers are scattered throughout, and act as highways winding into the dense equatorial forest. It is a land that is mostly untouched by human hands – a virtual Gan Eden transplanted to this remotest area of the globe. Like its prototype it can be viewed as a land that is very good. And, here too, poisonous snakes abide with reminders of the necessity for human vigilance against being taken in by their bite.

This area of Guyana has a population of 739,000 with a life expectancy rate of about sixty-five years. The poverty in these remotest areas is staggering and it is here that Aronson chooses to make her very personal contributions.

Preparations for this trip begin months earlier when large pharmaceutical companies are canvassed by letter for donations of drugs, medication, bandages, gauze and other materials. “We try to get as much as we can, but it is never enough.” Aronson recalls one occasion when a two year old Amerindian boy was rushed into their clinic after having fallen into boiling water. “If it hadn’t been for the gauze and dressings, we would have had to watch him die.”

Invariably, the group of medical personnel – doctors, nurses, pharmacists, a physiotherapist, a lab technician and others – travels with suitcases brimming with medical and school supplies as well as gifts for the children: ribbons for the girls’ hair and balls for the boys. They also bring along flip flops for the children since they have no shoes of their own.

Each volunteer is entitled to one personal suitcase and one bag. Aronson’s wardrobe consists of two or three skirts and some tops. Even though the temperature in Guyana hovers around 104 F (40 C) both day and night, for tznius (modesty) purposes, she insists on wearing heavy tights. “There is a great deal of walking over uneven terrain and I want to make certain that I am dressed as modestly as possible,” she tells me.

Aronson’s carry-on is filled with nursing supplies: water pumps, a microscope, centrifuges and perishable medication – essentially the stock of her trade. Kosher food and Shabbos provisions take up a separate suitcase. Depending on the particular year, one to three other frum individuals participate as well. Last year her son accompanied her to South America. However, regardless of how many Orthodox Jews happen to come; many of the others often prefer to eat kosher along with them.

“We subsist mainly on granola bars, instant oatmeal and rice and lots of canned tuna fish. One person brings with a little gas stove and we make for ourselves macaroni and cheese as a treat. I also bring along powdered chumus and tehina and a flat package of gefilte fish. On Shabbos, we enjoy a can of salmon. We make certain to share our Shabbos meal with everybody.” This commitment to maintaining religious observance under rather challenging circumstances, Aronson believes, teaches respect for Jewish customs to those amongst them who are neither committed nor Jewish. “In this regard, it raises awareness of what religion is about.”

Aronson always makes certain to bring along candles for benching licht (candle lighting), wine for Kiddush, chalah and matzos. Among the native people a great deal of respect is shown for religious practices. The full extent was demonstrated to her on one particular occasion. She recalls how everybody was scurrying to boil water and make last-minute preparations for Shabbos. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a bell sounded five minutes prior to hadlakas neiros (candle-lighting time). She remembers one of the doctors commenting that the ringing of this bell reminded him of the call to Shabbos that resounds throughout the streets of Jerusalem every Friday. He had just finished making this observation when a large group of villagers, all dressed in white – their finest “Shabbos” clothing – appeared. About seventeen women respectfully made their way over to Aronson, who had just then begun reciting the blessing over the candles. When she finished, the women answered “amen”. Similarly, the men surrounded this doctor who shortly afterwards recited the Kiddush. They, too, answered “amen.”

The trip into these remote regions of Guyana is well-planned, albeit terribly exhausting. These medical volunteers, who come together from all over North America, gather in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city. There they are met by members of the Lions Club of Guyana. The group is then herded into an ancient, dilapidated bus for a one-hour ride to the next airport, where they then climb into tiny, eight-passenger planes for an hour-and-a-half flight either to the north or to the south of Guyana, depending on where the need is greatest. When they finally stagger off those planes, clutching their luggage, they are greeted like royalty by the health-care workers and the Amerindians, who were eagerly awaiting their arrival. They immediately set up camp and begin to work.

Remarkably, the mobile clinics that are quickly assembled include a triage area, examining rooms, pharmacy, a fully functioning laboratory and a physiotherapy clinic. For many of the native people, this will be the first time they will be examined and have their ailments treated by professional health-care workers. Some of these people have infested teeth and open sores; others have much more serious problems. Many have high or low blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. The majority also suffer from malnutrition. The poverty here is so great that many subsist on only one inadequate meal a day.

Aronson tells me that, by and large, these villagers are very gentle, painfully shy people. Although the younger ones now learn English in the schools that are set up for them by the Guyanese government, the older ones still converse in their native Akawaiu, an Amerindian dialect. Interpreters are, therefore, made available to the medical team.

A typical village can have eighty to two hundred people living there – although most do not reside within the village proper but further out in the surrounding areas. Villages are built close to the river, the primary means of transportation. Sailing from one village to another can take up to eight hours.

The Amerindians live in one-room wooden dwellings built on stilts with grass thatched roofs. Multiple families can live in two rooms. Inside, families sleep on suspended hammocks, which are then rolled up into rafters during the day. These “houses” are not built in close proximity to one another.

The men are often absent. Many are away working in mines and in the forests: the timber industry is a major employer in the area. As a result, the villages are primarily inhabited by the women and their children. There are many children with little food or clothing. The women do not wear slacks, as they consider it to be disrespectful to do so. Their wardrobe usually consists of one skirt and blouse. The women occupy themselves mainly by hoeing their tiny strip of land and by caring for the children. They exist largely on subsistence farming — they grow their own food. One of their food staples is cassava, a root vegetable that resembles a potato but has a somewhat different flavor. The women grate it and make it into bread that loosely resembles matzah. All the food is cooked over open fires outside their homes. Although hens and roosters abound, the Amerindians will slaughter them only if they are starving and there is no alternative. They are kept primarily for the eggs they produce. There is no milk for the children.

Interestingly, although the Amazon region is replete with rivers and waterways, there is very little healthy fish available for eating as the waters have been heavily polluted by the mining industry. Aronson tells me: “it is not uncommon to see dead fish floating in the water because of the chemicals that are released in the process of extracting ore.” In this regard the goodness of the land has, once again, been violated through human initiative. Because the waters are so polluted, they cannot be used for drinking. The rainwater gathered in the barrels is also very dirty. One of the major contributions of the medical team is to teach the native people how to sterilize water. Nevertheless, doing so carries with it its own challenges as there is no electricity, and generators are used very sparingly. “Although there are forests everywhere, the native people will not cut down a living tree for their own purposes. Their firewood comes from the leftover stock sold to them from the lumber industry. Ironically, as a result, the people have little wood from which to make the fires they so desperately need,” Aronson explains. They are, therefore, taught how to paint containers black so as to attract the heat of the sun and to boil and sterilize water that way.

Schooling for children takes place in a one-room schoolhouse in the village. Children learn to read, write and to do a little math; by the time they graduate they have the education level equivalency of our grade three. “The children love putting on presentations especially in commemoration of their Independence Day. They are very proud that they are one of the original seven tribes of Guyana. Every tribe considers itself special.” In the course of their lifetime very few of them will ever move out of the villages.

Within the two weeks of their stay, Aronson and the mobile clinic visit approximately five villages, travel hundreds of miles and treat thousands of patients.

During their time in Guyana, the team takes on a lifestyle far removed from the comforts of home. They indeed rough it in the most literal sense. Like the native people they, too, must sterilize their drinking water. They sleep two per tent on sleeping bags, and wake up at 4:30 a.m., when the roosters begin to crow. But it is precisely at this moment, when night breaks into day, that Aronson finds the greatest peace. It is then that she takes advantage of the magnificent stillness to doven (pray) and gives thanks to G-d. Working among the Amerindian people has significantly altered her perspective on her own life. “Today, when I say baruch HaShem I really mean it. When I say the brachos (blessings), I thank HaShem for my way of life, for my house, my family, my job. I thank HaShem that I am a Jew.”

In the course of her many experiences, Aronson was able to witness remarkable acts of bravery and resourcefulness. She recalls that one evening their dispatch radio suddenly sprang to life, sputtering out an emergency request for a mercy flight. A young boy had fallen twenty feet out of a tree, and he desperately needed to be airlifted to a hospital. Although mercy flights are meant to be available for all emergencies, planes may be occupied elsewhere when the call comes through. On this particular occasion, the pilot was willing to make the flight but only if adequate illumination could be provided to enable him to land his plane safely. Since there is no electricity in that remote region, a heavy darkness envelops the entire area at the close of day. Because of this, the medical team quickly jumped into action, teaching the people how to make standing torches that were strategically placed in the middle of the village. Watching that plane appear, seemingly out of nowhere and being expertly lowered onto this makeshift runway, was a sight she will never forget.

Although many villages do have health clinics of their own, often they do not have the personnel to administer them properly. There are, though, amongst the native people “wise men and women” who are proficient in the use of herbs for medicinal purposes. One such elder astounded her colleagues by the extent of his innate medical knowledge. Mrs. Aronson feels she is not overstating it by claiming that “He was one of the most astute medical men I have ever met.” On that particular trip, they asked this healer to bring in his twelve most seriously ill patients. “He brought them to us, along with a detailed evaluation of what their illnesses were. Without any instruments, using only his eyes, sense of smell and sense of touch, he was right on the mark in every single case.”

Much effort is placed on education — for instance, in teaching the people proper labor and delivery techniques and elementary CPR. In the past, without this basic knowledge, many newborns were tragically left to die. As well, multi-vitamins that work to combat vitamin A Deficiency that leads to blindness are distributed, as are iron sprinkles that combat anemia in young children. Also, due to the efforts of health-care workers such as themselves, the incidence of malaria has been significantly reduced. These kinds of advances are tremendously encouraging.

Nevertheless, it is ultimately the lessons that the Amerindians teach Aronson — for instance, about the relationship between deprivation and acceptance — that has touched her most deeply. She relates the following story: “We stopped off at one village and knew we had only five hours there. Three hundred and fifty people greeted us, and we did our best to examine as many of them as possible. When our time was up, there were seventy-five people left, and we knew we would not be able to get to them. Even though this meant that they would never receive the care they needed, not one of them begged us to stay. There was such an acceptance of their lot that it broke our hearts.”

It is poignant moments like these that vividly expound the human response to extreme poverty. It is this that moves Leya Aronson to once again pack her bags and for two weeks of the year, attempt to bring hope to those who have so little and yet appreciate so much.

Once again, Ve’ahavta is proud to announce we are again hosting a Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless (CWC). This competition reflects the importance within Judaism of expressing ones creativity. CWC is born out of the idea that the Jewish people are the people of the book and therefore encourage thinking, reading, writing, and wonderment.

In its ninth year, CWC asks those living on or near the street the opportunity to write prose or poetry and have their submissions judged for cash prizes, by world renowned judges. Over the past eight competitions we have received riveting and compelling pieces from hundreds of men and women living on or near the street. These essays, poems, vignettes etc. have given us insight into the lives of some very creative and special community members, living under bridges, in shelters or ravines.

In the past, our list of judges has included: Michael Ondaatje, Tony Blair (former PM of the UK) and Belinda Stronach. This year, activist and actress, Mia Farrow, has agreed to judge CWC.

In 2010, there some very important firsts.

This year, our 9^th Annual Creative Writing Contest has gone National! On Sunday March 7^th Ve’ahavta’s Creative Writing Contest Coordinator, Jacqueline Stein, and Outreach Initiatives Coordinator, Eric Cisterna, landed in Vancouver, British Columbia to promote the contest for the homeless and those at risk of being homeless. The voices of Canadians abroad are being welcomed by Ve’ahavta for the first time! Learn about some of the magnificent programs exclusive to the strip of East Hastings and some of the already established arts programs within the core. Follow their progress on Twitter as they work through the streets of downtown Vancouver and be in touch with the hearts and minds of those living in poverty from the west coast @ericveahavta and @culturalcurator.

This year, Ve’ahavta is excited to announce that this year Kernel’s Popcorn is once again sponsoring first prize, increasing it from $1000 to $1500.

This year prizes will be presented at a new, more accessible venue – The Hart House, on University of Toronto campus. Please save the date – May 30th. Refer to our website – www.veahavta.org – for more information.

We wish those living on or near the street much success in their bid to secure prizes and recognition for their creativity. Ve’ahavta’s goal is to eliminate homelessness. Perhaps CWC will encourage those submitting to reflect on their own soulfulness and creativity, and find their way off the street.

Repairing the World (Tikun Olam) Through Volunteerism, Kindness & Building Global Bridges

Order your Passover Tribute Cards today!

Wish friends and family a Happy Passover with one of our uniquely designed tribute cards. The world has recently witnessed devastating events. Now more than ever, we appreciate the gift of tikun olam – repairing the world.

Choose from our 7 card designs, including our most recent addition to the collection; a holiday card featuring artwork by Ve’ahavta’s Founding President, Avrum Rosensweig.

Or you may choose a Kinder Kit card, which will help us to supply a child in need with essential school supplies. In light of the story of Passover, it is poignant to recognize that with education often comes freedom.

Click here to order your cards today!

For questions, or to place an order by phone, please call (416) 964-7698

VE’AHAVTA NEWS

Kinder Kit Project Update

Ve’ahavta would like to express our gratitude to the community for your enthusiasm and support in the Kinder Kit Project. Collectively, you have sponsored 4,065 kinder kits to date! Our main channels of distribution for kinder kits in Toronto over the next year will be through the following agenices; Jewish Family and Child Services, Tomchei Shabbos, and Children’s Aid (Canada).

In 2010, our goal is to distribute 15,000 kinder kits to children in need locally and internationally. To help us achieve this goal, please consider sponsoring a Kinder Kit for $18 or collecting school supplies to donate to the project.
Please contact robyn@veahavta.org for further details.

Click here to sponsor a Kinder Kit

A special THANK YOU to the following Kinder Kit Project supporters:
Peter and Marla Seligman
The Singer Family
Temple Emanuel
Beth Emeth Bar/Bat Mitzvah families
The Annex Shul

UPCOMING EVENTS

Save the date for Ve’ahavta’s most exciting STARRY NIGHTS yet!
Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Ve’ahavta is thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for STARRY NIGHTS 2010 is internationally acclaimed humanitarian activist, Sir Bob Geldof.

The M.C. for the evening is the hilarious and talented David Shore (Creator, Writer, and Executive Producer for the Emmy Award winning television show House).

Once again Ve’ahavta will present distinctive Tikun Olam Awards to many special and deserving tikun olam heroes of our time.

More information to come! Please save the date.

Are you up for the Challenge? May 16th 2010

Register your team now for the 2010 Great T.O. Challenge! After last year’s astounding success (volunteer teams raised $60,000 for Ve’ahavta homeless intiatives expansion project), and the hype leading up to this year’s event, we do expect to reach registration capacity quickly.

Sign up a team today for this thrilling and unique in-car scavenger hunt adventure to raise funds for the homeless men and women living on the streets of Toronto.

Click here to register NOW!

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

Homework Club Program at Evangel Hall

Seeking: Volunteers for after-school tutoring in all subjects
Where: Evangel Hall (552 Adelaide Street West)
When: Monday afternoons (3:30pm-6pm)

Guyana’s Medicine and Health Education

Seeking: Individuals interested in volunteering their services to a community-based medical development project in Region 7, Guyana. Specifically looking for Physicians, nurses, midwives, social workers, public health specialists/educators, family planners, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, and support workers.
Where: Guyana, South America
When: June 6th-June 20th, 2010

GUYANA MISSION APPLICATION DEADLINE: FRIDAY, MARCH 26TH

For all volunteer inquiries, please contact our Volunteer Desk at 416.964.7698 x 16 or by email at volunteerinfo@veahavta.org

VOICES FROM THE FIELD

Project Cover Up

Emily Freeman is currently 12 years old and the creator of Project Cover Up! Read here an excerpt from Emily’s Bat Mitzvah D’var Torah about her adventures on the streets of Toronto with Ve’ahavta handing out cozy blankets to the homeless with her family…

On January 21st my Mom, Dad and me went out in a van…not just any van…it’s called The Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless van, driven and supported by Ve’ahavta and delivered 125 fleece blankets on the streets of Toronto to the homeless. We worked from 6pm until midnight….and it was COLD. Ironically though, it was the most heart warming experience of my life! The people who we were able to give our blankets to were so grateful, so moved, so touched…..and they were so WARM. In some cases, the thing that they craved most was not food or clothing or a blanket, although they were incredibly grateful to receive any or all of these items, but it was a friendly face, someone to talk to, a conversation that they really appreciated, and I got so much out of this experience. One random act of kindness…well actually 125 random acts of kindness…This is the meaning to Tikun Olam. On January 21, 2010 I began my mission of Tikun Olam…to repair the world…one blanket at a time.

For Emily’s full D’var Torah, please click here.

Speaking Tikun Olam

Should you give money to a homeless person panhandling on the sidewalk?

Click here to write your response and see what others have to say.

Volunteer Corner

When I come home from a long day with Ve’ahavta I know that I have given everything I have and it has been selfless. It helps to keep me grounded, and appreciate what I have. Most importantly, I feel like I am being a role model. My family and friends inquire as to why I’m so exhausted and I proudly respond that today, I did the right thing, today I helped to perfect the world. By leading by example and being a guiding light for others, the positive, viral impact is enormous.

- Wesley Slater, Ve’ahavta MJRH volunteer

Featured Corporate Sponsor

Food & Supply Donation Request

Ve’ahavta’s new Youth Breakfast Club program, sponsored by TNT, is in need of food supplies. Please let us know if you can help us secure the following items on a weekly basis;

• yogurt
• cheese strings
• cereal
• Fruit
• Muffins
• Granola/Snack bars
• Juice boxes or small bottles
• Milk boxes – small ones

Please contact Eric Cisterna at eric@veahavta.org

Donate to our Seder Marketplace!

On Tuesday March 30th, 2010, Ve’ahavta will be hosting its 11th Annual Passover Seder for the Homeless, and we need your support!

Please consider donating the following items for the event Marketplace;

• Men’s, women’s, children’s clothing and shoes (good condition only please)
• non-perishable kosher food items (canned/boxed)
• childrens’ toys

Please contact Jackie Stein at jackie@veahavta.org

*please do not drop off supplies without confirmation

Follow Ve’ahavta on Twitter!
http://twitter.com/VeahavtaNews

Please Save The Date: Sunday November 7^th 2010

This year our keynote speaker is internationally acclaimed humanitarian activist Sir Bob Geldof.  Geldoff, who was born and raised in Ireland, is co-founder of the charity super-group BAND AID, which was created to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Following that success he organized LIVE AID and then the LIVE 8 concerts. He is also the lead singer for the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats. Geldof was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Not only has he received a Man of Peace title but been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Our STARRY NIGHTS M.C. this year is David Shore – creator, writer and executive producer for the award winning television series HOUSE M.D.  Shore, a former lawyer, was born in Canada and has won numerous prestigious awards including a Gemini for the Canadian television series Due South, and a Primetime Emmy Award for House. House is distributed to 66 countries and in 2008 it was the most watched television program in the entire world.

As always, Ve’ahavta will present Tikun Olam Awards (Repairing the World) to many special and deserving humanitarians. Join us for this soulful evening highlighting exceptional Mitzvahs (Good Deeds) in areas of philanthropy, education, remembrance, young leadership, medical and charitable work

More information to come – stay tuned!

STARRY NIGHTS 2010 is guaranteed to be a memorable and exciting evening so save the date!!!

Emily celebrated her 12th birthday in February 2010. Project Cover Up is a special project that she initiated in honour of her Bat Mitzvah.

Let me take a moment to talk about what a Bat Mitzvah means to me as a Jew. I asked myself, what does a Bat Mitzvah mean to me? I kept telling my friends what I wanted to get and what I planned to buy. I was so excited but I realized that it’s not about the gifts, it’s not about any of that. Becoming a Bat Mitzvah means to grow up, to become more mature, and to be welcomed into the Jewish community as a young adult. I am now expected to take care of things myself, and not to rely on my parents for everything. But, it’s not just that. It is so much more. I have expectations to do mitzvot, give tzedakah, and fulfill the 613 mitzvot of the torah. I will work at fulfilling as many mitzvot as I can, one of which is Tikun Olam, which brings me to this.

On December 24th my family and I had the pleasure of going to see The Sound of Music at The Royal Alexandra Theatre downtown. It was a cold day, snowing a little, and definitely not a great day to be outside. On the sidewalk next to where we parked was a grate. We saw a young man wearing a heavy sweater, without a jacket or mitts, checking the grate for heat so he could warm himself. My dad said that he had a fleece blanket in our car and wondered if we should give it to the man. We all agreed, OF COURSE, and proceeded to get the blanket out of the trunk and we all walked over to him and gave it to the man. He could not believe it. He was so touched, so grateful, so appreciative.

It is something that we all take for granted – covering up whenever we are cold. To this gentleman it was like winning a lottery. He wrapped himself in the blanket, lay down on the grate adorned in his precious garment. The sigh of relief from the man’s mouth said it all!

My purpose is to be responsible not only for myself and for my actions but to be responsible for others – to help others less fortunate than me – and I know how very fortunate I truly am! In trying to make some kind of connection between my Parashat and extract some meaning from it, with the help of my mom, I decided to create my very own tzedakah project.

I call it Project Cover Up. My Mom, the greatest sourcer of merchandise and deals that I know, went out and purchased 125 Queen sized fleece blankets. I partnered up with a fantastic organization called Ve’ahavta to reach the homeless and get these blankets delivered. They believe in the role of Tikun Olam – the act of repairing the world.

On January 21st my mom, dad and me went out in a van (not just any van – it’s called The Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless) driven and supported by Ve’ahavta and delivered the 125 fleece blankets on the streets of Toronto to the homeless. We worked from 6pm until midnight and it was COLD. Ironically though, it was the most heart warming experience of my life! The people who we gave our blankets to were so grateful, so moved, so touched, and they were so WARM.

In some cases, the thing that they needed most was not food or clothing or a blanket (although they were incredibly grateful to receive any or all of these items) but a friendly face, someone to talk to, a conversation that they really appreciated. I got so much out of this experience. One random act of kindness…well actually 125 random acts of kindness…this is the meaning of Tikun Olam.

On January 21, 2010 I began my mission of Tikun Olam – to repair the world – one blanket at a time. It all stared with that one blanket but in a short time it reached another 125 people in need. With this tzedekah project I was able to reach a significant number of poverty stricken people.

We all have the strength to make a difference in this world we live in, and often take for granted, and I believe that this project has the potential to become bigger and better. I believe that this project not only made a difference in the lives of the homeless people, but it certainly a difference in my life as a new responsible adult.

- Emily F.

Great news!

The 40′ container that Ve’ahavta packed and sent on November 30, 2009 arrived safely at the Howard Hospital in Zimbabwe. The shipment took three months to arrive.

Thanks to our donors, partners, and volunteers, the Howard Hospital continues to be one of the only fully operational public hospitals in the country, providing medical services for 155,000 patient visits each year.

The container was filled to capacity; it included:

• an ultrasound machine
• an ECG machine
• a fetal monitor
• 3,000+ boxes of medicine and medical supplies
• crutches
• canes
• an electric scooter
• toilet paper
• scrubs
• used clothes
• 700 pairs of shoes

The shipment also included 1,600 Kinder Kits destined for the Kenyamba primary and secondary schools.

Summary of Haiti Crisis Fund Allocations

Ve’ahavta to date, we have received approximately $240,000 for its Haiti Crisis Relief Fund. An additional $214,000 was requested from The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for matching funds for the disaster response

More than 50% of the total funds were allocated within 30 days of the disaster the remaining funds will be distributed to our partners pending field reports.

Total funds have designated in the following manner

House of Hope Orphanage- $88 000

Ve’ahavta has committed to providing crisis relief and rehabilitation support to the House of Hope Orphanage, located in Gressier, Haiti.  Thankfully, all residents of the orphanage survived the disaster.  The orphanage is currently caring for 200 and suffered structural damage from the earthquake.  In addition, Alice Barthole, Director of the Orphanage, has been struggling to source supplies- food, water, fuel, cooking supplies- as well as temporary shelter for the children of HOH.  Ve’ahavta has allocated $88,000 to the orphanage.  To date, we have transferred $30,000 to the House of Hope through our local Canadian Partner, Canadian Feed the Children.  We are waiting for a report from CFTC detailing how this first transfer of funds was used before we release the next phase of funding.

Magen David Adom- $50 000

Ve’ahavta had designated $50 000 through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee towards supporting the efforts of the Israelis in Haiti.  Originally, Ve’ahavta intended these funds to support the IDF-run field hospital located in Port Au Prince, but the IDF decided not to extend its operations in Haiti.  Magen David Adom took over the field hospital, and Ve’ahavta’s funds were redirected to support that effort.  Ve’ahavta is waiting for a report from the JDC on how the funds were spent through MADA.

Humanitarian Aid Shipment- $30 000

Ve’ahavta has allocated $30 000 towards a container of humanitarian aid and Kinder Kits to be shipped to Haiti in July, 2010.

Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief- $25 000

Ve’ahavta is the sole Canadian member of the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief.  We contributed $25 000 towards the JCDR.  As of our last conference call, the JCDR had collected approximated $190,000 from its members and through its general mailbox.

Collectively, JCDR members supported Chabad of the Dominican Republic in the financing of two shipments of emergency supplies into Haiti.  Goods were distributed through Surfuturo, a local NGO with the logistical support of United Nations Security.

The JCDR also supported the Afya Foundation in shipping mattresses, blankets, and medical supplies to Partners in Health, an NGO based in Haiti.

The JCDR also supported the International Rescue Committee by working with its local partners to provide food, water, shelter, and emergency health care.

The JCDR supported YOUTHAITI, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit based in Milwaukee, WI has been working in rural Haiti for the last 3 years on projects of Ecological Sanitation and Sustainable Agricultural development.  YOUTHAITI is a partner agency of Mazon International.

The JCDR also supported EarthSpark International, a partner of AJWS, who purchase, transport and distribute solar lamps to the Haitian community for immediate earthquake relief.  EarthSpark also promotes post-disaster development by conducting clean energy capacity building activities with Haitian communities, including working with partners to develop local infrastructure for clean, efficient energy technologies, providing technical education and training to students and small and micro-enterprise owners and mitigating local environmental damage caused by energy poverty.

Israel- $16 000

Ve’ahavta would like to continue to support Israeli NGOs in their efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Haiti.  The Director of the International Department is currently finalizing partnerships.

Health Partners International of Canada- $5,000

Ve’ahavta allocated $5,000 to HPIC which operates a Mississauga-based distribution center.  HPIC facilitates the shipment of medical supplies via container shipments and its Physician Travel Pack program via its local NGO partners who operate in Haiti. In the last two months (January and February), HPIC has delivered 110 PTPs (approx. WSV $55,000.00)and they anticipate to ship 90 more for a total of 200 PTPs (approx. $100,000.00) to Haiti.

HPIC have worked and continue to work with about a dozen or so NGO partners, including Ve’ahavta. These partners have field offices in Haiti or are working in collaboration with other NGOs in the field. They have shipped approximately 2.2 Million WSV of essential medicines, vaccines and medical supplies. We continue to work with these partners in the second phase response and anticipate to ship several more containers in the next few months totaling 5 million in WSV.

Ve’ahavta Volunteer Support and Scholarship Fund- $5,000

Ve’ahavta has designated $5000 of its Haiti Crisis Relief Fund towards supporting the air travel and volunteer expenses associated with volunteer placements with NGOs operating in Haiti.  This fund was created with the intention of supporting volunteers who are affiliated with Ve’ahavta who are providing crisis response services in Haiti.  To date, we have supported two volunteers (at approximately $800 USD/person)- Dr. Mark Fenig and Shawna Novak.  We have received written reports from the former and are awaiting a report from the latter.

Needs Assessment to determine rebuilding infrastructure options – $4 000

Ve’ahavta has allocated $4 000 towards a needs assessment in Haiti.  We anticipate sending a volunteer team of up to 4 people to Haiti at the end of April to visit the House of Hope, conduct a needs assessment, and create a forward plan for Ve’ahavta’s future support of the orphanage.

Administration- 7%

Ve’ahavta has designated 7% of all funds raised through the Haiti Crisis Relief Fund to Admin.

Should you give money to a homeless person panhandling on the sidewalk?

Through our generous donors, we have raised $260,000 for the people of Haiti, and are now providing aid to 200 orphans at the House of Hope Orphanage in Port-au-Prince. We have also granted funds to Magen David Adom emergency relief workers on the ground, Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, Health Partners International of Canada, and the Ve’ahavta Volunteer Scholarship and Support Fund.

Ve’ahavta is monitoring the situation on the ground in Chile following a devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake on Saturday, February 27th. Nearly two million people have been affected by the earthquake in Chile, with close to a thousand feared dead or missing, several hundred Canadians among them. Thousands throughout the country have been displaced, sleeping on the streets out of fear of aftershocks.

Approximately 20,000 Jews live in Chile, more than half in the capital of Santiago. According to reports from the country, Jewish facilities were either lightly damaged or were largely unaffected. Ve’ahavta is accepting donations for Chile. Donations will be distributed through the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief (www.jdc.org/jcdr_main.html) to partner agencies which are providing crisis relief in Chile. For more information, please call 416-964-7698.

On Tuesday March 30th, 2010, Ve’ahavta will be hosting its 11th Annual Passover Seder for the Homeless, and we need your support!

Please consider donating the following items for the event Marketplace:

• Men’s, women’s, children’s clothing and shoes (good condition only please)
• non-perishable kosher food items (canned/boxed)
• childrens’ toys

Please contact Jackie Stein at jackie@veahavta.org

*please do not drop off supplies without confirmation

Our six person volunteer team departed this Sunday for Guyana on Ve’ahavta’s 12^th medical mission. The team is operating a mobile medical clinic, providing free primary care and health care support to indigenous communities. Our volunteers are also focusing on health promotion and education, as well as supporting local health care workers in their efforts to build and strengthen local communities. So far the team has run clinics in Itaballi and Four Mile, and have seen approximately 200 patients so far. The team will be flying into the interior community of Kamarang on Thursday to run a series of clinics in local Amerindian villages.

We recently received two reports from a volunteer, Dr. Mark Fenig, who we have helped sponsor and who is now providing relief support in Haiti.

Report 1:  Dr. Mark Fenig

Day two has been super-tiring. Despite docs and nurses and volunteers numbering over 70 there seems to be an endless amount of work. I flew here with 3 orthopedic surgeons, 2 anasthesiologists, 2 physiotherapists, and 4 nurses, 1 internist (and I’m and ER Doc). Our team is one of about ten from various States and Countries. Everyone works well together so things are running as efficiently as you could expect in such a resource poor environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Hannah Damiani celebrated  her 7th birthday on January 9, 2010. She asked all of her friend to make donations to Ve’ahavta, instead of presents, to help the homeless. In January, Hannah and her brother Seth, came into Ve’ahavta’s office to give us the funds they had raised to help the homeless.  What a beautiful and compassionate gesture. We learn much from little people. Read the rest of this entry »

To follow regular updates on the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, click here.

Haaretz.com features a piece about Haiti’s small but close-knit Jewish community. Click here to read the article.

Geoffrey Clarfield has been with Ve’ahavta for five years. He has worked long and hard to help take Ve’ahavta to a more formal stage, one which all NGOs must go to. He is a true Renaissance Man and a deeply care Jew and human being. We are honored to have been his colleague.

Barbara Morton has worked with Ve’ahavta since 2001, and has played a vital role in solidifying and strengthening our back office. She is a passionate Catholic and will now work closely with her church and projects to assist those in need.

We wish both of them continued success as they venture into the next stage in their lives.

Click here to read Mia Farrow’s diary about Darfur.

Ve’ahavta has collected $180,000 for our Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. We have exceeded our expectations and as of this morning have used up our matching funds. We will be applying to the Canadian government, however, for funds to be matched.

Thank you to all those individuals who have committed to Ve’ahavta’s Earthquake Relief Fund so far. We will update you on our activities including assisting the orphans of The House of Hope in Gressier, Haiti with required food and water.

The situation there continues to be desperate and we are working closely with our partners to ensure an immediate response. Well done in joining this very serious and important tikun olam response.

B’shalom,

Avrum

On Tuesday January 12th, a massive earthquake occurred in Haiti. According to UN estimates, thousands are likely dead and millions more have been left injured and/or homeless. Untold numbers of people remain trapped under the rubble of crumbled and collapsed infrastructure, and aid agencies are still struggling to make contact with their key personnel on the ground to assess the impact of this disaster.

With a per capita income of $3.60 per day, Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, its population is especially vulnerable to natural disasters such as Tuesday’s earthquake.

Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee has created the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund to support relief efforts to address the urgent needs of the affected population.

Ve’ahavta has a matching donor for every dollar you give, in addition to which the Canadian government is also matching dollar for dollar. So if, for example, you make a $100 donation, the ultimate benefit is that people in Haiti will receive $300. Any donation you make today will make TRIPLE the difference.

Please use Ve’ahavta’s secure form to make your tax-deductible donation to Tikun Olam — repairing the world — in Haiti.

Thank you for your generous support during this time of crisis.

On Monday December 14th, Ve’ahavta, in partnership with TNT, a retail clothing chain, sponsored an entire day of meals — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — at Evangel Hall, a downtown drop-in centre. About 125 people came to each meal and left with full tummies and gifts in hand!

Below is a photo of the day’s crew, including Aryeh, the owner of TNT, his mother, and staff, Ve’ahavta’s staff, DJ’s Alvaro and Boris Castellanos,  and Evangel Hall staff. A huge thank you goes out to them for their powerful and sincere volunteerism, and ongoing contribution to Tikun Olam!

The MJRH outreach van will be changing its Wednesday and Thursday morning runs to evening runs, 6pm to 12 midnight, commencing on January 6, 2010, in order to better serve our clients and volunteers.

If you have any questions, please call our van phone at 416-906-6616. Your feedback is, as always, welcomed and appreciated.

To learn more about Ve’ahavta’s MJRH volunteer opportunities, click here.

On Sunday November 8th, 2009, Ve’ahavta and the Toronto community joined together in celebration at the annual Starry Nights gala, to raise funds for Ve’ahavta’s humanitarian projects.

To read what our guests, volunteers, and speakers had to say about the event, and to view photographic evidence of the night’s success, click here!

Read Avrum’s, Ve’ahavta’s Director,  latest piece in The Canadian Jewish News!

On November 30th, 2009, with your support, Ve’ahavta will provide children with the tools to receive a proper education by sending 1,600 Kinder Kits and 40 Teacher Kits to Kenyemba Primary and Secondary schools in rural Zimbabwe. Read more.

Theresa Schrader, a woman who only a few years ago was living on the street and prostituting to satisfy her drug addiction, went on to win Ve’ahavta’s Annual Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless. Today,  Theresa is living a positive and sober life and working towards a degree in Social Service work. Read more about Theresa’s struggles and triumphs in a recent Toronto Sun article.

Ve’ahavta is proud to have responded to the recent natural disaster in Samoa. Together with the Israeli Government, Toronto businessman Walter Arbib, and the UJA/Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto, we have sent pharmaceuticals appropriate to the suffering in this country.

The island nation of Samoa was devastated in late September after multiple earthquakes and tsunami. 150 people died and thousands were left injured and homeless. The Samoan government received assistance immediately after the tragedy from Counterpart International (Counterpart) in coordination with SkyLink Aviation, an international aviation company.

“You cannot close your eyes when you see these things happening,” says Walter Arbib, President of SkyLink Aviation.

Rescue forces are still searching for more survivors and adding to the death toll across Samoa, the earthquakes have finally subsided and water levels have begun to decrease. Now the country faces a massive cleanup and assessment of the widespread damage.

Counterpart and SkyLink have sent more than $125,000 worth of medical supplies to Samoa, treating over 5,000 survivors in the area.

Counterpart called upon a medical supplier in the Netherlands who had medicines available for immediate distribution. SkyLink, in cooperation with the United Jewish Appeal and Ve’ahavta on behalf of the Israeli Government, joined forces with Counterpart to send them to the people of Samoa. The pharmaceuticals were distributed in Samoa on Thursday, October 8^th.

Included in this distribution are anesthetics, analgesics, penicillin, antibacterial drugs, antacids, anti-infective agents, oral rehydration drugs, antifungal, anti-inflammatory and antipruritic drugs.

Counterpart’s direct contact, Dr. Stanley Dean, the General Manager of Samoa’s National Health Services, will facilitate the distribution in the most desperate areas after the SkyLink delivery.

A concert of youth musicians promoting harmony among people, performed by the Renanim Youth Singers and featuring the Swansea Youth Drum Squad.

Join us on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 7:30PM

York Woods Library Theatre (1785 Finch Avenue W.)

$15.00/adults

$10.00/students and seniors

For tickets and information, call (416) 398-0289

See the event flyer for full details.

Ve’ahavta is once again holding our Creative Writing Contest for the Homeless. This is a very beautiful program. We ask people living on or near the street to write a literary piece — be it a biography, critique, poetry — which they submit to be judged by some very high profile judges in the writing industry.

Would like to donate one of the awards for the contest? Every year we give out cash prizes to the winners. The top prize of $1,000 is sponsored by Kernel’s Popcorn. We are also delighted that Ryerson contributes a free course as part of the top prize. Please consider donating an award which will go directly to the winners. You will receive a receipt for the donation. Your options are:

1. $750 – 2nd Prize
2. $540 – 3rd prize
3. $360 – as many as possible
4. $180 – as many as possible
5. $100 – as many as possible
6. Products – If you would like to donate a product that you believe would benefit a winner, please make a suggestion. Some examples are a laptop, a collection of classic novels, a coupon to purchase reading glasses, or a writing class bursary.

Once again this is a beautiful program and offers an opportunity for many people living on or near the street to express their creativity and experiences. This is very much in sync with the Jewish approach to tikun olam (repairing the world), as Judaism speaks about the development of the heart and soul as a way of making our world a better place.

We’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions section to the web site.

Feel free to contact us. If you have more questions about this important issue.

We are currently working on our 8th annual Creative Writing Contest for the homeless. For more information about the contest and to download the talented contributions of last year’s winners, see the Creative Writing Contest section of the web site.

Ve’ahavta has established a crisis response fund in an effort to purchase much needed emergency medical equipment for the Soroka University Medical Center, now on the front lines of the ongoing crisis in Israel. Your receipted donation to this fund will help patients of the Soroka Medical Center to recover from the conflict. For more information, see the Ve’ahavta web site.

While we are working to ease the crisis in Israel, we are not forgetting our other programs. We are also currently recruiting volunteers for our Social Services program in Argentina and are hiring a coordinator for the Creative Writing Contest for the homeless.

Ve’ahavta would like to wish everyone a happy Hanukkah and a joyful holiday season.

While we are enjoying this time with family and friends, let us not forget those less fortunate than ourselves. We are already gearing up for this year’s Second Seder and we need your help. We currently have volunteer opportunities on the Passover Seder Event Committee. Keep an eye on the web site for other voluteer opportunites closer to the date.

Cold comfort

With an early blast of Ol’ Man Winter whipping through the city canyons this week, the tug-of-war over sleeping bags will begin afresh, reports Wendy Banks

WENDY BANKS

Special to The Globe and Mail

December 6, 2008

Joan Ruzsa’s client, a homeless man, woke up one morning last month to discover that his sleeping bag had been stolen. He went to a community health agency that had given him survival gear in the past, but he was turned away. “They told him that the city was no longer funding sleeping bags,” says Ms. Ruzsa, co-ordinator of Rittenhouse, an advocacy group.

As this weekend brings in an early blast of Arctic air to the Greater Toronto Area, nobody wants to see people sleeping rough – least of all the general manager of the City of Toronto’s shelter, support and housing administration, Phil Brown. “We invest in getting people off the streets and into housing,” he says, “particularly in the very cold days that we experience throughout the winter.”

He is talking about the city’s award-winning Streets to Homes program, built on a “housing-first” model, which, according to Mr. Brown, has housed about 2,200 of Toronto’s estimated 5,000 homeless people since its inception in February, 2005.

But as the chill air settles in over the city next week, the battle will heat up again on what to do about homeless people who refuse to go into shelters.

Shelters, Ian and Darren agree, are terrible.

“The bedbugs!” Ian says. “They’re brutal.”

“And they sell crack right in the front door. You go in there to try and better yourself,” Darren says. “But when it’s there, it’s so easy to just …”

So what do they do when it gets cold?

“Freeze!” Darren says. They burst out laughing. “Sometimes we’ll sit in the subway shelters, until they kick us out,” he continues.

“Then the ATM places, until they kick us out,” Ian says.

The two of them were sitting together cross-legged on a pale-blue sleeping bag in a Bloor Street doorway one cold evening recently. That night the temperature fell below zero – this Arctic front will bring in subzero temperatures – and Ian and Darren had no plans to visit a shelter. The only thing standing between them and hypothermia was their sleeping bag. It was newish, in good shape, relatively clean. Lined with grey polyester, it looked light – better than a skimpy summerweight version, but no match for a frigid Toronto night.

It came from Ve’ahavta, a Jewish humanitarian organization that works with homeless people, they explained. “They also have them down at the church …” Darren said, pointing west down Bloor.

Last year’s winter was brutal, and, according to Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips, this one promises to be snowier than average as well. Add a sour economy to the bitter weather, and some might wonder if an exclusive housing-first model is the best policy right now.

“The whole housing-first thing is based on something that advocates have been saying for a long, long time,” says Michael Shapcott, director of community engagement at the Wellesley Institute, a Toronto-based think tank on urban health, “which is that housing is one of the most fundamental issues for successfully stabilizing people.”

But, as he sees it, the political realities of the program leave something to be desired.

When Streets to Homes was approved by city council, it was accompanied by a few provisos designed, he says, “to give people a bit of a nudge to get off the street” – for example, a bylaw making it illegal for anyone to camp in a municipal square, and withdrawal of support for agencies that distributed survival services such as mobile food programs and sleeping bags.

However, “not everybody who is on the street is going to be willing to go into housing,” says Lorne Opler, a project manager at Ve’ahavta. For one thing, he says, “the accumulated impact that [homelessness] takes on one’s mental health is indescribable.”

For another, past traumatic experiences in shelters might make some homeless people reluctant to live in close quarters with others. “Some people think, ‘Well, what if I wind up living with a roommate who can be no different from the kind of people I might have been with in the shelter?’ ” Mr. Opler’s program, Mobile Jewish Response to Homelessness, has found one answer: Its van delivers warm clothes and hygiene products to street people four days a week. He says there’s an advantage to being funded through private donations: “We’re able … to pursue what we want to do with our focus and our mission statement intact.”

For the time being, privately funded and faith-based groups are still providing homeless people with survival supports – for example, the Out of the Cold program offers meals and beds in 19 churches and synagogues throughout the city, and organizations like Ve’ahavta and Street Health are distributing private donations of sleeping bags and warm clothes this winter.

Improvements to Streets to Homes are on the horizon: In May, 2008, city council approved funding for 72 full-time housing follow-up and outreach workers, up from 24; and they’ll be extending services to marginally housed people – shelter users and couch surfers, for example – as well as people sleeping rough.

Ian and Darren have both been on the streets for years. But Darren is hoping to get into a Streets to Homes apartment soon; he’s met up with an outreach worker and done the initial paperwork. “I just did it a week ago. He said it’d take about two to three weeks,” he says. “I call him on a regular basis, at least once a week. I was supposed to meet with him today, but I was elsewhere. But he knows I’m around.” Some friends of his were housed by Streets to Homes in the summer.

“Now they’ve got a good place. They’re happy. It does work, yeah,” he says, nodding, his breath coming in white puffs. “It does work.”

As Ve’ahavta is bringing Mariane Pearl, the widow of American Jewish Journalist Daniel Pearl, to their Starry Nights Tikun Olam Awards Ceremony and Gala, we invite you to watch this important documentary on the life of this tragic figure. The Journalist and the Jihadi will be airing Sunday, September 21 at 8:00 PM ET. It chronicles the events that led up to the death of Daniel Pearl. It’s a gripping account narrated by award-winning journalist Christiane Amanpour. Please visit http://www.documentarychannel.ca for more information.

The documentary channel is on channel 321 on the Rogers system in the Toronto area and on channel 336 on Bell ExpresVu.

Journalist Mariane Pearl will be the keynote speaker at Ve’ahavta’s Tikun Olam (repairing the world) Awards ceremony at the 2008 Starry Nights gala presented by Distributel. Ms. Pearl was five months pregnant when her husband, Jewish-American reporter Daniel Pearl, was murdered by extremists in Pakistan in 2002. Her story stirs our consciousness and inspired a film A Mighty Heart, starring Angelina Jolie. ?Her strength and resilient spirit will inspire us as she delivers a message of justice and hope.

Ms. Pearl will also present this year’s Ve’ahavta’s Tikun Olam awards on behalf of Ve’ahavta to six inspiring individuals in the categories of humanitarianism, medicine, remembrance, education, student affairs and philanthropy, all who have contributed to making the world a better place.

The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee, Ve’ahavta is motivated by the Jewish values of Tzedakah/Justice, and continues to assist the needy at home and abroad through volunteerism, education and acts of kindness while building bridges between Jews and other people.
Starry Nights will be held on November 16, 2008 at Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. For more information, or to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.veahavtasstarrynights.com or phone 416-964-7698.

Following is the list of 2008 Tikun Olam Award recipients:

• Humanitarian (co-recipients): Dr. Norm Epstein and Dr. Acol Dor are co-founders of CASTS (Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan) and strong advocates against atrocities in Darfur.
• Remembrance: Judy Cohen, Holocaust survivor and tireless advocate, educator and leader who is determined to keep alive the memories of Holocaust victims.
• Education: Eli Rubenstein, National Director of the March of the Living, an educational program that annually sends Jewish teens to Poland and Israel to honour the memory of Jews who were victims of the Holocaust.
• Medical: John Kelsall, President of Health Partners International of Canada, an organization that has enabled millions of people to receive much needed medical supplies in underdeveloped and war-torn countries.
• Student Affairs: Danny Richmond has inspired thousands of students to Repair the World through advocacy, education and hands on humanitarian work on five continents.
• Philanthropy: To be announced at the Starry Nights Gala.

The gala will be hosted by Ron MacLean and the musical guest is Ivana Santilli, Juno-nominated Canadian singer/songwriter.

The Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless van’s new Tuesday night shift was described in a recent Canadian Jewish News article, “Ve’ahavta adds night shift to help homeless” by Rita Poliakov. To volunteer for a Tuesday night shift on the Ve’ahavta van, contact the Volunteer Coordinator.

Exciting news! We have just officially launched our Tuesday night van shift starting Tuesday, June 17. Tuesday night shifts on the Mobile Jewish Response to the Homeless van run from 6 PM to midnight.

Volunteer spots are going fast! To book a shift on the MJRH van or for further inquiries, please contact the Volunteer Coordinator.

Ve’ahavta’s Sixth Annual Starry Knights Gala was a huge success. For more information and photos, check out the Starry Nights page. Watch this web site for information about the 2009 Gala.

With annual giving, how big will your estate still be? Get the answer by using the TriDelta Donation Planner at http://www.tridelta.ca/donation_planner.php?org=veahavta.