The Good People Fund
We talk with Fran Held, Founder of Mitzvah Circle Foundation, a Pennsylvania non-profit organization and Good People Fund grantee that provides donated and purchased goods like clothing, children’s books, toiletries, housewares and more to individuals and families in crisis.
While in DC, we stopped in to talk with change maker Abby Sondak, Founder of Just Imagine. With support from The Good People Fund, her organization is giving summer overnight camping experiences to disadvantaged inner-city youth and leveraging the moment to prepare them for success in college.
The Good People Fund is proud of its early leadership role in the Jewish community’s growing conversation about respectful workplaces and gender harassment in our communal spaces. To date, much of our work has been channeled through a single project that has become known as “B’Kavod” (“With Respect”).
While we are gratified that meaningful progress has been made, much work remains to be done. It is a source of satisfaction that as a result of our efforts, others in growing numbers, have joined in our focus on this important issue. In light of this progress, we have decided to formally end our participation in the B’Kavod project and reassess how in the future we can most effectively continue to play a constructive and leading role in this ongoing dialogue.
Going forward, we expect to identify new, innovative, efficient, and effective means to continue to play a meaningful role in the Jewish community’s ongoing focus on this important issue.
We will keep you informed as things evolve.
Today, Israel is home to more than 150,000 Ethiopians, with more than half living below the poverty line. In that number are many teenagers who were born in Ethiopia and made aliyah as infants and young children. For most, there is no understanding or recollection of their country of origin.
Dr. Stu Chesner, a noted psychologist who has lived in Israel for many years, understands the unique needs of young people, many of them Ethiopian, who struggle to fit in and began Magen, a new Good People Fund grantee, to provide a holistic approach to academic, emotional and social intelligence.
The Ethiopian kids in this picture arrived in Ethiopia today in search of their roots and to better understand their heritage. It was our honor to underwrite the trip for three of these young people. We can only imagine the insights they will gain from this journey “home” and how those insights will help them mature and become productive adults.
As the year 2019 approaches in but a few hours, we are so excited to receive the following email from Lilach Tzur Ben-Moshe, founder of Yotsrot, which uses vocational training, particularly as it relates to the fashion world, to help women leave prostitution and regain economic stability. Lilach, along with many others including our grantee, Rabbi Levi Lauer, founder of ATZUM, have worked tirelessly to end this scourge:
Hi Naomi,
Happy new year to you and to your family! May it be wonderful!
Just a second before the new year enters, history was made – the Knesset passed the law prohibiting the purchase of sex, and referring budget for rehabilitation. I’m so proud to be part of the great group of women, activists, PMs and prostitution survivors who made it happen against all odds. I know that women will still be sold in prostitution but today Israel said with out a doubt that this is wrong, harmful and inhuman. So today I’m proud to be an Israeli.
Thank you for all of your support in this miracle. 2019 is a bit happier indeed.
Lilach
We at the Good People Fund are proud of the support we have offered on behalf of our donors to make this law a reality. It was well past time!
It’s been more than a year since Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico. In the interim, how many other hurricanes have created crisis and despair in their aftermath? Sadly, this is becoming an all too-familiar scenario.
But–in Puerto Rico, circumstances were even graver, with the loss of the entire power grid leaving millions with neither electricity nor safe housing. Erika Velez and her all-volunteer Puerto Rico Lit organization are still working in remote areas, and recently completed construction of ten new wooden homes in Toa Alta. Just yesterday, this new refrigerator, one of four The Good People Fund underwrote, was delivered to a family with young kids and a seriously ill family member. Imagine what life is like with a working refrigerator!
Our Journal of Good 2025 captures the positive change that each of us in the GPF family helps to create and advance in a challenged world. Marking our 18th (“chai”) anniversary, the 2025 Journal of Good is a force for the possible.
