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!

A call today from a trusted source served as a reminder of the special significance of the month of Elul, traditionally a time of reflection as we approach the Jewish New Year.

The story involves a young adolescent girl raised in a rigidly observant, religious environment devoid of love and compassion. To escape this personal hell, she entered another form of hell and turned to the streets working in prostitution for several years.

Eventually she became known to an Israeli organization working to end prostitution and in time began to volunteer with them, ultimately leaving the streets to start a new life helping other girls in similar situations.

Through her essays and personal interviews she is deemed a serious and capable student. Inspired by her volunteer work, she will return to school next month to study social work.

Through the generosity of our donors we will be able to help her with this worthy pursuit and, as the new year begins, seek to save one more life from the predations of exploitation and suffering.

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

Some set off by plane.  Others by car.  And still others in a shared van.   Their common destination, the mountains of Appalachia, where need wears a human face and tikun olam can be in short supply.

Waiting for them: a massive truck of donated food and other items to unload, a winding ramp to be finished for a man with handicaps, and multiple structures to fix, paint and spruce up — among other projects.

This was tikun olam powered by sweat, a few days of positive works and human connections earlier this month to honor the sacred Jewish value of repairing the world — a guiding Good People Fund (GPF) principle in both theory and practice.

“We are trying to make a little corner of the world slightly better, sooner, for some of these people,” said Peter Freimark, a GPF Board member and volunteer from Cleveland.

He was one of about 20 volunteers from around the country — including a delegation from Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn, NJ — who gathered in McRoberts, a Kentucky town of just under 800 people in a region stained by rural poverty.

Here, unemployment, economic stagnation and lack of social services and opportunity are not distant statistics, but day-to-day reality.

“Every trip to McRoberts gives me and all of our committed volunteers greater understanding of the unique problems affecting people living there,” said Naomi Eisenberger, GPF Executive Director.

“Beyond the physical things that we leave behind, the fact that we care and come back year after year is an indication that we recognize that these people are there and that we care about them.”

At one point, she joined Susie Duncan, a 15-year-resident, to help volunteers unload a 53-foot trailer load of canned food and other non-perishable items, plus household goods and personal hygiene products.  The items will be distributed through schools, churches and community centers to those who need them, and also delivered directly to elderly and homebound people.

“To realize there are people in the world who care about us and our well being gives hope to a very cut-off community,” she said. “When you feel so isolated and that no one cares or is looking, and then The Good People Fund group comes in here and does things for people they don’t know, it restores faith in the goodness of people and what they can do.”

At one home, volunteers finished a job started last year by sealing a lengthy ramp linking a house steeped on a hill with the road below, easing the way for a wheelchair-bound man to socialize within the community.  At another, volunteers helped a recently widowed woman clean and spruce up her home, adding brightness at a vulnerable, lonely time for her.

The June trip marked the ninth year that GPF, in partnership with Congregation B’nai Israel, brought a volunteer corps to McRoberts.  Many participants – from high school students to seniors – have made the trip numerous times.

Andrea Levine of Short Hills, NJ, a member of Congregation B’nai Israel making her second trip to McRoberts, said beyond the hammer-and-nails projects on the ground there, people-to-people connections can be even more long lasting.

“We should all step outside of our comfort zones and help people we may never have met otherwise,” she said.  “Year after year, relationships and trust are built where they never before existed and probably would never be.”

Steve Moehlman of South Orange, NJ, a GPF Board member, underscored the point. He described how a young boy in McRoberts followed him around and befriended him, sharing how he would spend the summer swimming in the local creek with friends and making birdsongs.

“His life may be difficult, but in every basic way, he is just a boy like any other kid anywhere else — and as deserving,” said Moehlman, who has made three previous trips to McRoberts and was accompanied this year by his 25-year-old son, Jesse, who has been going since he was in college.

“It is an immeasurably positive experience to create these connections, find out what we all have in common, and how we can all just help each other overcome the various challenges we all have.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz, for The Good People Fund

Hi Naomi,

Your two kids are in the final of this amazing award WeWork creator awards Jerusalem. From thousands of ngos we made it to the final three. Met here this morning for production walk-through.