She described a journey through a darkness most know nothing about – that of a professional Jewish woman navigating the netherworld of prison life and later reemerging into society to reclaim her dignity and purpose.

Evie Litwok was at a New Jersey synagogue speaking at a social action Shabbat, and if her tale of a life bent to extremes by the criminal justice and penal systems created awareness through discomfort – and it did, judging alone from the air in the room – then she hit her mark.

“I am gifted with being articulate, and so I have to tell this story,” she said. “I need to use all my strength to make people aware and force change.”

That story is one of two decades fighting charges of white collar crime and culminating in two years in federal prisons – including a stint in solitary confinement. The experience introduced her all too intimately to social malignancies and human rights abuses festering and growing there, from homophobia to misogyny to racism and just about everything in between.

“I’ve never been physically or emotionally the same since then,” said Litwok. “I have no serenity anymore. I have no choice but to channel what I’ve seen and experienced into activism. I am a baby of the civil and women’s and gay rights movements, and I’ve never checked my activism, and I’m not going to now.”

The vessel of her impact is not only her own voice, but also the organization that she founded in 2015, Witness to Mass Incarceration (WMI). It is creating initiatives to raise public consciousness of conditions and abuses within the nation’s justice and penal systems and advocating for change.

The group is one of the Good People Fund’s newest grantees and received a matching grant to bolster its capacities, reach and effect.

Among WMI’s initiatives is a nascent but growing library of digital testimonies of formerly incarcerated individuals, giving a record of their experiences an archive and public platform. So far, about 25 people have sat for interviews.

The focus of the testimonies, and WMI in general, is on women and members of the LGBTQ community – individuals Litwok said are most vulnerable to abuses in the justice and penal systems and beyond.

“We must change the narrative from invisibility and victimization to empowerment through documentation, organizing and advocacy,” she said.  “Once someone sees the human faces of incarcerated people and hears stories, they will be more likely to support reform of a system that prioritizes punishment at every step.”

The group just this year launched a new initiative – The Suitcase Project – that seeks to ease the move to civilian life for those just released from prison and transitioning psychologically and physically to realities and demands that they are too often unprepared to face even within existing social services networks.

The project quite literally gives just-released people a suitcase with a laptop computer, a mobile phone with pre-paid minutes of usage, gift cards for groceries and clothing, and other essentials to help them build paths to productivity and self-worth.

The impetus for it came from Litwok’s own experience. She left prison in 2014, her resources depleted, her social support network nearly non-existent, and with scant prospects.

“Reentry is worse than prison,” she said. “Rarely is anyone waiting for you, rarely do you have housing, rarely do you have a community of support, or a job.

“I was given $30 and sent on a bus to Port Authority in New York. I was homeless and penniless for 16 months.  I understood poverty for the first time in my life.”

So far, two individuals leaving prison have received a suitcase, and a third will later this spring. Chasity, 33, began her journey back into society in January and said the Suitcase Project provides not only material support, but also represents and plants hope.

“It is just hard to re-enter with absolutely nothing,” she said, adding that she is starting undergraduate studies in criminal justice.  “So the suitcase opens doors to positivity and moving in the right direction as opposed to just being overwhelmed and feeling forgotten.”

The suitcase and its contents don’t come cheaply, and Litwok visits synagogues, like the one in New Jersey, to make the case for sponsorship of one, and in the process create a community of caring for those leaving prison and beginning new lives.

“The greatest thing we can do for each other in this life is to form and nourish community in all of its forms,” she said.

Speak with Litwok for any length of time and she will come to share the fact that her parents are survivors of the Holocaust, and that her closeness to that experience and her embrace of Jewish practice in prison informs and powers her passions and desire to make change.

“The Holocaust didn’t end for us in 1945,” she said. “It was a framework for me growing up, and how I see the world and the ‘other,’ and is simply part of who I am and a driving experience. If we really believe all that we say about ‘never again,’ then we can never allow those words to lose their meaning and value, and always be working to snuff out injustices and abuses so they don’t become the norm.

“I am up against the clock in my life at this point, and this is all that matters now. I don’t need to impress anyone for the rest of my life. I don’t care about making money. The driving Jewish values that we talk about don’t mean anything unless we make them mean something. I hope I’m doing that.”

By. H. Glenn Rosenkrantz

Mannequins here and there.  Swaths of fabric strewn across drafting tables.  Sewing machines and design sketches scattered about.   And lots of chatter and dark coffee.

Yotstrot’s studio in Tel Aviv is a hub of creative energy so common in this city.  But this one is different.  Start talking to the women here, and you will see that besides designing fashion, they are creating new versions of themselves.

“Here, I am learning and understanding that I am a person and not an object, and I can define myself on my own, and not through someone else,” said Lia, a transgender woman in her early 30s who is finding confidence, support and future at Yotsrot as she exits life in the sex trade.  “I have choices now.”

Hofchot et Ha’Yotsrot, or Turning the Tables, was founded in 2011 as a force for women’s empowerment, a venue nourishing community and incubating economic security, advancement and transformation for Lia and others climbing out of the vortex of prostitution.

Lilach Tzur Ben Moshe, Yotsrot’s executive director and founder, was a fashion editor at a leading Israeli online news site and used to commute each day past Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station, where much of the sex trade takes place. She became disturbed and agitated at the exploitation and ugliness of it all to the point of action, using her own background in design to create a way out.

“The greatest motivation for me was seeing in my own eyes, every day, women who are being used, sold, and exploited in prostitution,” she said. “It hit me in in my strongest point of power as a woman and I knew I had to do something to change it.”

Since its establishment, Yotsrot has assisted more than 300 women with vocational training in design, sewing and pattern making in studios in Tel Aviv and Haifa.  Ongoing training in digital marketing – a skill necessary for any creative entrepreneur in the 21^st century – is also offered with the support of The Good People Fund.

But this is so much more than nuts and bolts training.

In a world in which any sort of trigger can mean a skid toward unintended behaviors, for anyone, Yotsrot is a venue of mutual support and understanding to catalyze self-esteem and fuel dreams.   A network of social workers, counselors and others is committed to ensuring that everyone meets their own definition of success and future.

For Lia, who came to Israel from Russia in the early 1990s, that means ultimately using her new confidence to uplift children through performance art.  For Or, originally from Ethiopia, it means using some of her newfound creative and technical skills to become a graphic designer.

Yotsrot and everyone involved got a major shot of community validation last year during Tel Aviv’s fashion week, when Yotsrot designs got full runway treatment and exposure, worn by Israeli celebrities, including the wife of the city’s mayor.   Another public fashion show will take place in May.

“Knowing every women and every journey she has made, showing on the most lighted stage there is that women in prostitution have so much to offer,” Ben Moshe said, “and seeing and feeling the excitement and the amazing effect on women, this was a moment of pure happiness and pride.”

The organization has had other public moments, actively pushing for anti-prostitution legislation in Israel and being part of a coalition that helped pass a law criminalizing the hiring of prostitutes beginning next year.

“After years of working towards changing public perceptions regarding the damages of prostitution, change has come,” Ben Moshe said.

Back at the Yotsrot studio in Tel Aviv, Lia was fitting a dress she designed for the upcoming fashion show.

“Here, we find out that we can become, and that we can create, and not just break things, including ourselves,” she said.  “And that’s everything.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz

With three young children in tow, including one seven-month old in a harness, she examined a box of corn flakes and then moved on to get some crackers, watercress and green beans.

Just another family trip to the grocery store?  Hardly.

This single mother is in her 30’s and is among the millions of people across the country who are food insecure.  Whatever income and assistance she gets is not enough for her to feed herself and her family.

“This place is helping to keep me and my children fed and healthy because I can’t afford to on my own,” she said, asking that her name stay private. “I am here every week.  I’m not sure what I would do without it.  It is a blessing.”

Her destination is the Interfaith Food Pantry of the Oranges (IFPO) – a Good People Fund grantee – housed three Wednesday mornings each month at the Church of the Epiphany and Christ Church in Orange, NJ.

The organization supplies a wide array of food and other items, like toiletries, that make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of individuals and families in Orange and East Orange, outside of New York City.

From its beginnings about 25 years ago, when it served about 10 clients per week, IFPO has grown tremendously and now boasts staggering numbers, reflecting the need and the organization’s ability to meet it with community partnerships and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

In 2018 alone, IFPO’s food and services reached an estimated 18,000 adults, 2,200 seniors and 15,500 children, and about 300 people visit each week.

“There is wealth in this area, but just a mile up the road are people in real need,” said Andy Soloway of nearby Maplewood, one of about 500 volunteers for the organization.  “That’s why we are here.”

This is so much more than a food-giveaway program, though, and one merely needs to walk through it one day to realize that IFPO has grabbed the best elements of marketplace, community center, social hall and farmer’s market, tied it all up with proven practices of customer service, and created one big, bustling and boisterous venue for giving and receiving good.

Living here is an intense respect for the dignity of those who come. They walk from table to table, each piled high with various foodstuffs – grains here, proteins there, vegetables too – so they can actively examine and choose products while engaging with volunteers who can go on about everything from preparation and recipes, to nutritional value and storage.

“We are a community of volunteers focused and committed to helping our neighbors in need with as much grace as we can possibly provide,” said Jodi Cooperman, a volunteer pantry manager and IFPO Treasurer.

“By greeting them, welcoming them by name, escorting and helping them, we are making their experience as good as it can be, making them as individuals feel valued and respected, and building a community of caring and dignity.   And they, in turn, are that much more grateful and appreciative.  It’s just so important.”

And the concept of “client choice” – by which clients choose only the products they like and need and that fit their lifestyles and health profiles – cuts down on food waste, which may occur in more traditional programs that distribute pre-packaged bags of groceries.

Congregating around one table on a recent Wednesday, clients were choosing an allotment of toiletry products, ranging from body gels and shampoos, to mouthwashes and deodorants.  This particular station, which exists due to a grant from The Good People Fund, is just as critical as the ones devoted to food, Cooperman noted.

“We all feel more dignity and self-worth when we feel clean,” she said, noting that federal food assistance programs such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) don’t cover the cost of toiletries.  “These are essentials.  Why should people have to choose between food and toothpaste?  We don’t want them to have to.”

IFPO is a collaborative effort of three synagogues and one church in the area. Volunteers are also drawn from other faith communities, as well as schools and civic groups, underscoring the power of the many to uplift those who may be struggling.

One Wednesday morning, a group of volunteer adults with special needs – from ECLC (Education, Careers and Lifelong Community), based in Chatham – were helping IFPO clients at the toiletries station underwritten by GPF.

In the process of doing good work and helping others with needs, these volunteers were learning real life skills themselves, part of a cycle of benevolence and nourishment that touches everyone associated with IFPO.

“I don’t count the hours or the days,” said one. “I come for the joy.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Good People Fund

She wore a colorful headscarf and a broad smile greeting her guests one recent afternoon, inviting them to sit and enjoy chocolates set out on her small kitchen table.

Meet Irene Filo. She just turned 108. She lives in a small apartment in New York’s Morningside Heights. She uses a walker to move her slight frame about. She has no family. A live-in caregiver tends to her physical needs.

Irene is at a point in life when frailties, illnesses, memories and limited support can lead to an isolation and loneliness and longing so great as to be devastating to wellbeing and survival.

So it’s no surprise that she welcomed her visitors from LiLY (Lifeforce in Later Years) – a grantee of The Good People Fund – with such natural joy, care and anticipation. In very real ways, they are her connection to community, humanity and life.

LiLY creates that connection for about 100 elderly persons in Morningside Heights, a diverse and vibrant neighborhood that includes Columbia University, but where seniors living in relative isolation – some at or near the poverty line – can easily disappear.

“Just like anyone, they need validation and support and purpose and to feel valued,” said Irene Zola, LiLY’s founder and executive director. “They are too often not getting that. It’s tragic.”

Zola founded LiLY in 2009, shortly after the death of her mother and exposures to the nursing home system and its deficiencies, including undertrained and overworked staff often unable to dispense adequate and informed care.

Realizing that most seniors prefer to remain at home as long as possible, and that many in fact do, she moved to create a neighborhood organization devoted to supporting this often-forgotten population for no charge.

So she set up a card table on the sidewalk of a busy street and began recruiting volunteers. Today, LiLY has built a corps of about 100 people in Morningside Heights serving a near equal amount of seniors there.

The spectrum of volunteer interactions is wide, from friendly home visits and walks together, to helping with paperwork, escorting to doctor visits, making connections to professionals and services, and going to the pharmacy or grocery store for needed items.

The Good People Fund supports LiLY with a grant that helps pay for a social worker who connects seniors to services and resources beyond LiLY’s scope, helps families with care issues, and runs support groups.

“I have had some perfectly wonderful people come see me,” said a 97-year-old senior in the LiLY network. “It is good to know there are such people around. I thought they all died in a fire or something!”

LiLY calls its initiative in the neighborhood “Morningside Village,” a name that captures its very unique qualities creating community in not only name, but in practice. Most volunteers come from within the immediate neighborhood, for instance, sharing common points of reference and such with the seniors they visit and help.

“People are being connected in ways they wouldn’t be otherwise,” Zola said. “We may run into each other on the street while out taking walks or going to the doctor. It is like a small village.”

The success of Morningside Heights Village has been replicated elsewhere by LiLY. An initiative further east, called West Harlem Neighbors, began in 2016 and now involves about 25 local volunteers helping about 50 elderly persons.  And in upstate New York, LiLY formed community partnerships to create the Catskill Neighbors program, through which about 25 volunteers are helping a nearly equal number of seniors there.

Zola has moved LiLY into the advocacy field as well.  The organization is the force behind Celebrate Our Elders Week, marked at the beginning of October and recognized by the mayor of New York City and the state legislature of New York through official proclamations.

The purpose of such a public campaign, Zola said, is to ensure that seniors in our communities are not forgotten, but recognized, seen, and even honored, and that their needs are understood, acknowledged and supported.  LiLY has worked with the New York City Department of Education to create activities such as letter writing to elders and inviting them to visit schools.

“We want to kill ageism early in life,” Zola said, “and ensure that young people grow up honoring and respecting seniors.”

LiLY’s volunteer-driven program has immediate trickle down effects beyond the seniors themselves. If a family caregiver exists – and often one does not – home visits or errand running by LiLY volunteers can relieve very real stresses and conflicts.

“If I know that a LiLY volunteer is coming on Tuesday, then I know that I can leave and take the day to myself,” said Genia Gould, who stopped working and moved into her father’s Morningside Heights apartment to take care of him and his daily affairs. “For him, the visits are a vitamin. For me, they open time to take care of myself.”

Recently, LiLY volunteers, clients and others gathered at an annual luncheon.  Among them was Irene Filo.

Being that her birthday was close, everyone sang her a rousing “Happy Birthday” in celebration of her life, her friendship, and her indomitable spirit.

Her smile was as wide as it was that other afternoon, when LiLY volunteers came knocking on her door for a visit over chocolates.

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Good People Fund

It wasn’t easy, because the orchard was on a sloping hillside carpeted by loose dirt.  So keeping footing while plucking apricots from ripening trees was a challenge.

But the dozen-plus volunteers who showed up in late June to harvest this orchard were as dexterous and balanced as they were committed and focused.

“If it has some color on it, then pick it,” one veteran volunteer told a newcomer. “Each one we get is one that would have gone to waste if we weren’t here.”

And in just a few hours, over 700 pounds of the luscious fruit had been picked, boxed and hauled off to food agencies for quick distribution to people in need – an estimated 1,400 from this one day alone.

The late-afternoon pick, which continued toward dusk, was a snapshot of the work and impact of Village Harvest.  It’s a San Jose-based non-profit organization dedicated to gathering the bounty of fruit growing in backyards and small orchards and getting it into the hands and onto the plates of those who may be going without.

The area around San Jose – including Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties, where Village Harvest is active – is one of the most verdant in the country and boasts an agricultural history and spirit that is legendary.   It is rare for suburban properties here not to have a fruit tree or two, and many larger estates have full orchards conserved by owners.

Such is the case where this particular apricot harvest took place.  Nestled on an estate high in Los Altos Hills, with sweeping views of the Bay Area, an orchard with about 80 apricot trees was bearing fruit at peak season.  But for Village Harvest and its volunteer corps, much – if not all of it – would have gone to waste.

“Many property owners here are well aware of the history of this region, so they don’t want to plow down these trees, but they don’t want to be farmers either,” said Craig Diserens, Village Harvest’s executive director.  “That is where we step in.”

Volunteers harvest fruit of all sorts – from apricots and pears, to apples, oranges and lemons – at no less than 600 homes and 30 orchards throughout the year.

All this work makes a hefty impact on many pressing societal challenges, like hunger, poverty and healthy eating for vulnerable populations.  In 2017 alone, volunteers picked 225,000 pounds of fresh fruit, which translated to 600,000 servings of healthy food for tens of thousands of people in the community.

The Good People Fund, which makes food rescue and the alleviation of hunger a priority, has supported Village Harvest with grants to help cover the costs of harvesting and development of a directory of produce donation locations.

Diserens, a former computer hardware designer and R&D manager who also worked at high-tech start-ups, described Village Harvest as an “accidental organization,” founded more organically than purposefully, but developing and growing in reach and impact since its first harvest in 2001.   He recalled how a local 4-H chapter approached his wife at the time, a Master Gardener, for advice on where to locate fruit to make jam.

“We realized there was infinitely more around us than anyone would ever need to make jam,” he said.  “It was more of a sense of recognizing abundance around us and wanting to put it to good use to help people.”

Village Harvest now relies on Diserens’ strategic and visionary acumen honed in Silicon Valley, and the sweat of 1,200 volunteers from throughout the community who in total contribute about 12,000 hours of work each year.  Their purposes are varied, from those passionate about food waste and poverty, and those who are interested in gardening, to those who want to be outdoors doing something useful and social, and parents who come with their children to instill an appreciation for hard work and the earth.

For volunteer Sue Godfrey of nearby Los Altos, the June apricot picking marked her 40th event with Village Harvest.  Her first, three years ago, was with her son as part of a high school service league project, one of many community partnerships that Village Harvest has forged since its founding.

“It is doing good while getting good exercise and being very social,” she said.  “And as volunteers, we get to bring home some of the fruit that is damaged and not good for distribution.  I’ve done a lot with plums.”

The community-building power of Village Harvest has grown as a reflection of the organization’s work.  In fact, “strengthen our community” is part of the heading on its website.

Beyond the camaraderie among volunteers joined in a food justice activity, workshops and resources are available covering everything from fruit tree care and gardening, to making preserves and pruning.

Back at the staging area at the edge of the orchard, volunteers were examining apricots and separating out ones damaged or not fully ripe, ensuring the highest quality shipments to community service and food agencies that form Village Harvest’s distribution chain.

“Every community should have a Village Harvest of its own,” said Diserens, as he looked over the bounty. “What abundance they tap into may vary, but the sense of community spirit and doing good is the same, and so inspiring.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Good People Fund

David Baskin, left, and Ilan Kedar, co-founders of Ani Shlishi, in front of the organization’s new secondhand clothing store in Tel Aviv before it opened in the spring.

There’s a new shop selling clothes on Tel Aviv’s busy Allenby Street.  Ordinarily, that’s not so remarkable, but upon closer look, this one is.  It has a mission:  uplifting lives and community.

Ani Shlishi, it’s called.  In English, that translates to “I am third.”  Signs within the store, like the artful one near the register, go deeper.  “First comes the greater good, the welfare of others is second, and I am Third,” it reads.

Ask David Baskin, the Chicago-raised, 28-year old CEO of Ani Shlishi, and he’ll tell you about Ross Freeland, his teacher and baseball coach at Evanston Township High School. He repeated and lived these words, until his death in 2016, instilling in his students a sense of individual sacrifice for the good of others and community.

“It was the idea of being a selfless, generous, kind person, with responsibility to others, whether through the prism of being a teammate on a baseball team or just as a human being,” Baskin said. “That never left me.”

In fact, this brick-and-mortar retail store, which opened in a 55-square-meter space in the spring, is the face of a non-profit organization of the same name.

Ani Shlishi collects secondhand clothes for resale, employs at-risk Israeli youth along the operational chain to give them marketable skills and a future, and uses sales proceeds to fund vocational training scholarships for them and other youth similarly situated on an at-risk spectrum that includes poverty, drug use and homelessness.

The Good People Fund is partnering with the organization with a grant for stipends for young Israelis working at the new store.

“For many of them, this is the first time they have the validation that they can actually be someone,” Baskin said.  “We are giving them permission to dream of infinite possibilities.  Everyone wants to be someone, but not until now has anyone given them that encouragement.”

Ani Shlishi originated in 2016 when Baskin, a lone soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), noticed that other soldiers – like him finishing their service – were discarding piles of clothes and other usable items before leaving the kibbutzim where they were housed.   He started collecting them for donation to orphanages and other agencies dedicated to underserved populations, and saw first hand how peoples’ lives can be changed by small acts.

Soon, he teamed with his friend and former superior officer in the IDF, Ilan Kedar, who was then working in Israel’s booming high-tech sector, and the two began scouring Tel Aviv for secondhand or never-used clothing to keep up a steady stream of donations.

“David’s entire two-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv was stacked with the clothing we were getting,” said Kedar, 27, now Ani Shlishi’s COO.   “We would spend hours and hours all night long going through them to decide what to donate or recycle.  It was intense. What we were doing became a part of us and we knew it was making a difference.”

In less than a year, the pair was running pop-up secondhand shops throughout Tel Aviv, selling collected clothing and using proceeds to help at-risk youth in the city.  Soon, they had an established stall at Tel Aviv’s bustling Shuk HaCarmel, where Ani Shlishi’s visibility and sales soared and the need for a more traditional and roomy retail store became apparent.

The two view the store as a multifaceted center of doing good, touching everyone from those who enter it with bags of donated clothing, and customers who are supporting community, to at-risk youth working there, gaining self-worth and new skills, and those getting vocational training through Ani Shlishi scholarships.

“We are breaking cycles of poverty and inertia, and everyone having anything to do with this is contributing to that,” Baskin said, pointing out a sign hanging in the store that declares in Hebrew, “if you purchased, you donated.”

Already, Ani Shlishi made it possible for a 17-year-old at-risk youth to enroll in a program to become a professional lifeguard, typically a stable and well-paid vocation in Israel.    And another, age 15, disengaged from his family and with a history of drug dealing, is now tapping into his dancing talents and taking a course with the intention of becoming an instructor himself.

“To us, this might not be a big deal, but to them, these sparks are a very big deal,” Kedar said. “They are not finishing high school and they are not going to college.  They need something practical as a path to self-sustainability.  With a skill, they can give back and feel of value.  That is huge.”

Back at the store, Baskin was inspecting a few dozen bags of donated clothing that would be sorted for either sale, further donation, or recycling.   He himself was an admittedly “troubled” teenager, marked by a period of aimlessness and some brushes with the law, his path corrected with support of family, educational opportunities and IDF service.

“Like every single item in our store that was cast away and is now finding its rightful home, these at-risk kids are the same,” Baskin said. “The mainstream systems aren’t for them, they need something a little unique and we try to help them find their way and their place.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Good People Fund