On Nov. 16 in Mountain View, Naomi Eisenberger, Founding Executive Director of the Good People Fund and grantee Craig Diserens, founder of CA-based Village Harvest, along with volunteers, harvested over 900 pounds of fruit for the local food agency.

Village Harvest began two years ago, and this backyard gleaning effort gathers thousands of pounds of fresh fruit and gets it into the hands of local hunger programs where people who might not have the means to purchase costly produce can enjoy the seasonal bounty.

Within a three-hour time span, about 15 volunteers, led by a volunteer coordinator, gathered at the local food agency and received instructions and maps to nearby homes where they were to pick crate after crate of persimmons.

With the agency’s van equipped with all of the tools needed to carry out the mission – ladders, telescoping pickers to reach the highest branches, crates, gloves, rakes and more – about three hours later the results, included 900 pounds of fresh persimmons and a corps of volunteers who had come together to benefit their community.

This year, Village Harvest received a grant of $5,000 from the Good People Fund.

Village Harvest ( www.villageharvest.org) uses volunteers to glean the abundance of produce (nearly 500,000 pounds last year alone) from private property and re-developed orchards and deliver it to local hunger programs.

What differentiates Village Harvest’s efforts is their belief that the volunteers’ actions actually strengthen the community around them.

Their grant of nearly $5,000 was allocated towards their Orchards Harvesting Program, organizing volunteers to pick historic or noncommercial orchards (some planted during the Gold Rush 150 years ago) and preserve and restore old orchards for future generations.

Pictured are Naomi Eisenberger, Craig Diserens and volunteers gleaning around Mountain View.

Volunteer opportunities and information can be found at www.villageharvest.org & www.goodpeoplefund.org

Founded in 2008, The Good People Fund, inspired by the concept of repairing the world, responds to significant problems such as poverty, disability, trauma and social isolation, primarily in the United States and Israel. We provide financial support and management guidance for small to medium grassroots efforts. Our grant recipients are leading their non-profits with annual budgets under $500,000 and no professional development staff but are driven and determined to make a difference in their communities. With its guiding philosophy that small actions can have huge impacts and its emphasis on the personal connection, the GPF has raised and granted more than $6 million dollars since its inception in 2008. Further information can be found at www.goodpeoplefund.org.

–Images and info courtesy of The Good People Fund.

Good People In Mountain View! Volunteers Harvest Produce For Food Bank _ Mountain View, CA Patch

Naomi Eisenberger, founding executive director of the Good People Fund, traveled to the Bay Area last week to meet with nonprofits that the New Jersey–based agency has funded through its Tzedakah Initiative.

In Oakland, Eisenberger met with David Fox, co-founder and executive director of Amir, which brings garden-based education to Jewish summer camps. The two talked about Amir’s work with Jewish teens and college students as well as area food pantries.

Her meeting in Mountain View with Village Harvest was much more hands-on. Along with founder Craig Diserens and 15 volunteers, Eisenberger spent the morning gleaning fruit from persimmon trees in local neighborhoods — experiencing first-hand the Village Harvest mission of gathering fruit that largely would go unharvested, and then providing the bounty to local hunger programs. In three hours, the crew gathered 900 pounds of persimmons.

The Good People Fund is a 6-year-old nonprofit that supports more than 40 mostly grassroots agencies, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in the United States and another 25 in Israel. For more information, visit https://www.goodpeoplefund.org.

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Atlanta based non-profits Second Helpings Atlanta (SHA) and Creating Connected Communities (CCC) recently received opening grants totaling nearly $10,000 from the Good People Fund, which will also provide ongoing management guidance.

GPF discovers and supports small, effective tzedakah initiatives dedicated to tikkun olam, in the United States and Israel, that might otherwise not be on the radar of larger charities.

What sets SHA and CCC apart from many other nonprofits is that they are the products of individual visionaries. These organizations help meet basic human needs, while operating with very low overhead and generating inspiring results. They join nearly seventy other nonprofits that are financially supported and professionally guided by The Good People Fund.

In 2004, Guenther Hecht founded SHA (www.secondhelpingsatlanta.org) as a social action project of Temple Sinai, in Sandy Springs.  An independent nonprofit organization since January 2013, SHA harnesses a force of nearly four hundred volunteer families and individuals, to rescue food that would otherwise go to waste from restaurants, supermarkets, churches, individual donors, schools, caterers, bakeries, and other establishments. SHA distributes the food to Metro Atlanta agencies to feed people who are homeless, abused, or living in poverty. SHA has collected and distributed nearly 3.5 million pounds of food. Its GPF grant will go towards general operations.

CCC (www.cccprojects.org) provides leadership training for teens to work with vulnerable children receiving services from Atlanta’s local agencies. Each year CCC mentors 30-40 Atlanta teens, raises their awareness on issues relating to homelessness, and teaches them important advocacy skills. CCC plans social and educational activities at local shelters. As a capstone project, it plans and hosts Amy’s Holiday Party for more than 700 underprivileged children from the greater Atlanta area. Its GPF grant will underwrite increased busing to bring more children to events, as well as costs involved in its spring event.

SHA was introduced to GPF by one of Temple Sinai’s associate rabbis, Elana E. Perry. Rabbi Perry’s bat mitzvah project involved collecting toiletries for battered women and homeless people; by the time she graduated high school, she was collecting upwards of 100,000 items and sending out start-up kits to others. She was recognized as a “mitzvah hero” by Danny Siegel, author of numerous books on tzedakah, mitzvahs, and bar and bat mitzvah projects.

Both SHA and CCC encourage teens in the areas of social responsibility, philanthropy, and an investment in tzedakah. At the age of 12, Amy Sacks Zeide was devastated after seeing a TV news report about the theft of all the presents from an Atlanta homeless shelter just before its annual holiday party. Amy then donated her time and bat mitzvah money to throw a holiday party for the children at a local Atlanta shelter. Today, she serves as the executive director of CCC.

Founded in 2008, The Good People Fund responds to significant problems such as poverty, disability, trauma, and social isolation, primarily in the United States and Israel.  It provides financial support and management guidance for small-to-medium grassroots efforts, with annual budgets under $500,000 and no professional development staff. Since its inception, GPF has raised and granted more than $6 million dollars. For more information, visit goodpeoplefund. org.

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Second Helpings Atlanta (SHA) and Creating Connected Communities (CCC), the host organization for Amy’s Holiday Party, are both the recent recipients of opening grants of nearly $10,000 from The Good People Fund (GPF). Their efforts focus on the power and teaching of social responsibility, teen philanthropy and an investment in tzedakah. GPF both discovers and supports small, effective tzedakah initiatives in the U.S. and Israel dedicated to tikkun olam that might otherwise fall below the radar screen of larger charities.

In 2004, SHA was founded by congregant Guenther Hecht as a social action project of Temple Sinai in Shady Springs. Today, several hundred volunteer families and individuals have rescued and distributed more than 3.5 million pounds of food.

Right down the road, CCC provides leadership training for teens to work with vulnerable children receiving services from Atlanta’s local agencies. As a capstone project, they plan and host Amy’s Holiday Party for more than 700 underprivileged children from the Greater Atlanta area. The grant will underwrite increased busing to bring additional children to CCC events as well as costs involved in their Spring event.

At the age of 12, Amy Sacks Zeide was devastated after watching a TV news report where someone had stolen all the presents from an Atlanta homeless shelter just before their annual holiday party, leaving the children with nothing. Amy then donated her time and the money she received from her Bat Mitzvah to throw a holiday party for the children at a local Atlanta shelter. She is now the Executive Director of CCC. Both Hecht and Zeide have instilled their Jewish values into the organizations they founded.

The deep rooted values that SHA and CCC promote are also shared by the mission of this micro philanthropy The Good People Fund, a true tzedakah initiative. In the coming months, Naomi Eisenberger, founding director of the Good People Fund, will visit the Atlanta area to catch up with Guenther and Amy.

Editor’s note: Rachel Litcofsky is the Public Relations Consultant for The Good People Fund. For more information about The Good People Fund, visit www.goodpeoplefund.org.

atlantajewishtimes.com/two-atlanta-nonprofits-receive-grants/

Julie Leven takes classical music to a place where it has never gone before in Boston: homeless shelters.

Leven, who is Jewish and lives in Arlington, plays the violin with the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra and tours with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. But although she has performed with the Jerusalem Symphony and the Aarhus Symfonieorkester in Denmark, and in music festivals all over the world, she believes that classical music not only belongs in gilded concert halls, but also has the capacity to thrive in the unlikeliest of places.

That simple idea inspired Leven to launch Shelter Music Boston, a nonprofit organization that brings professionally trained classical musicians to homeless shelters in the Boston area. The organization, which began four years ago after Leven read a news story about a similar nonprofit in New York City, now works with seven area shelters including the Pine Street Inn Shattuck Shelter in Boston, the Community Day Center of Waltham and others. The musicians play concerts at each of the seven shelters once a month. After one of her performances at a homeless shelter, a woman came up to Leven and said the music felt like “water for my soul when I was thirsty.” After another concert, two men got into a friendly argument about which composer was better: Beethoven or Dvorak. Just a short while before, these men “did not know they could talk about music with each other,” Leven noted. But her concerts brought them and many others together.

In an interview with The Jewish Advocate, Leven said no one should be excluded from classical music. She believes access to music is just as important for survival as food and a roof over one’s head, and works in concert with the work done by psychiatrists and social workers at the shelters. She said it gives people without a permanent home a sense of dignity. Many audience members tell her that at the end of a difficult day on the streets, coming to a shelter and listening to classical music has an uplifting and calming effect.

One of the unique features of Leven’s nonprofit is that the musicians, who mainly perform in duos and trios, receive pay for their work in the shelters – which, Leven explained, encourages them to be more committed to their relationship with Shelter Music Boston. And in order to be able to pay the musicians, Leven raises money for her organization.

Shelter Music Boston, since its conception, has raised about $100,000 from various philanthropies and individual donors. This fiscal year, Leven’s budget is $75,000. A significant portion of that funding comes from the Good People Fund, a philanthropic organization run by Naomi Eisenberger out of her home in Millburn, N.J.

The Good People Fund, which provides financial support to about 65 to 70 organizations in the United States and Israel, was founded on the Jewish principles of tzedakah and Tikkun Olam. In the course of six years, Eisenberger has raised more than $6 million, which went toward charities that alleviate poverty, hunger, disability, mental illness, trauma, social isolation, and other societal and personal ills.

In order to qualify for a grant from the Good People Fund – which, in addition to funding, also supports nonprofits with guidance and mentoring – an organization must have a budget less than $500,000. But most importantly, “There has to be the presence of a good person or good people; there’s got to be an individual who is responding to something – either something personal in their own life or something in this world that they feel passionately about and feel they need to change,” said Eisenberger. “It’s the story of the individual that guides us – that’s the first piece.” The Good People Fund’s donors, the majority of whom are Jewish, range from family foundations that give hundreds of thousands of dollars, to individuals who contribute one dollar a month, to Hebrew school students who send their tzedakah money to the fund.

The Good People Fund supports some of the nonprofits in the United States that are not oriented toward specifically Jewish causes, such as Shelter Music Boston. Eisenberger met Leven through Root Cause, a Massachusetts-based organization that serves as an incubator for nonprofits. After a 15-minute conversation with Leven, Eisenberger said, “This is a no-brainer for us. It’s such a creative and unusual program. [Leven] could have been a poster child for the Good People Fund.”

Leven, who has a strong connection to the Jewish principles of charity and social justice, said the work done by the Good People Fund resonated with her. With the grant from the fund, Leven’s organization was able to begin performing at two new shelters.

And Eisenberger, who attended a recent Shelter Music Boston concert, said, “It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

She added,“I cannot imagine what it would be like to report to a shelter every night in order to have a place to sleep. It was a moving experience and I came away even more pleased that we had decided to work with [Shelter Music Boston] and help them grow.”

Visit sheltermusicboston.org and goodpeoplefund.org for more information.

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