For youth at risk – specifically teens and young adults with past or current contact with the child welfare or juvenile justice systems – having a mentor can be a tipping point toward positive self-worth and a promising future. That’s what Connections Mentor – a Good People Fund grantee – makes possible in NYC and Westchester County to the north, pairing volunteer mentors with youth needing positive role models. Connections Mentor Founder Paul Muratore speaks with GPF Executive Director Naomi Eisenberger about making a difference in lives and communities.

Flip through the online pages of jGirls Magazine for a deep dive into compelling issues – from self-identity to social pressures to protest – created by self-identifying Jewish girls aged 13 to 19. jGirls – a Good People Fund grantee – is the brainchild of Elizabeth Mandel, a New York-based documentarian, writer, and community activist who created the multi-media platform to elevate and empower critical voices, often marginalized. She speaks about her vision and impact, and the challenges of being a social entrepreneur during challenging times.

Jacob Sztokman was on a business trip to Mumbai when he came across abject need and horrendous conditions in the city’s slums. The exposure shook him up to a point of no return. He gave up his career in high-tech to establish Gabriel Project Mumbai – a Good People Fund grantee – to improve lives for individuals and families in India’s challenged urban areas and outlying villages.

She was in her 90’s at the time, living alone, suffering from Alzheimer’s, prone to falling, and increasingly unable to take care of herself. While neighbors and responders thought it might be best for her to be living in a seniors’ home, she refused.

It turns out that she was an escapee from Nazi Germany and spent some of the war years hiding and protected in Christian churches. The thought of facilities or institutions evoked troubling, even terrifying memories, and she said she preferred to die before ever leaving her home.

Through a combination of legal, social, and medical and therapeutic assistance, the elderly woman was allowed to remain in her house with an assigned, fulltime caretaker – her dignity, sensitivities, and needs respected and met.

It didn’t have to end this well, and it often doesn’t. But in this case, a network of expertise and support began surrounding her, one inclined to find and establish new norms for such cases of distress, and eschew practices that very often result in even greater suffering.

“The reality is that people meet crisis, and it can be anyone and at anytime,” said Dr. Mickey Schindler. “We would like to think things only happen on the other side of the fence. But suddenly, things break down. Some outcomes are better and more desirable than others.”

Dr. Schindler is one of the founding visionaries – and now director – of MARVA – Law, Welfare and Empowerment, a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization established by a group of Israeli attorneys and social welfare experts. The acronym itself mirrors the Hebrew words for law, welfare and empowerment, the three legs supporting MARVA’s mission and approach.

The organization, a Good People Fund grantee, assists and uplifts vulnerable populations – from elderly at risk, to individuals with mental disabilities – facing difficulties caring for their own well-being and protecting their own rights.

How it does so is a departure from the standard, which is so often siloed and one-dimensional, applying a this-or-that approach that is less than optimal. Instead, MARVA embodies and models a holistic approach combining legal aid and advocacy for full legal rights while also facilitating and integrating social welfare and therapeutic support.

It’s a multi-disciplinary design making it possible to provide comprehensive solutions to issues affecting the lives and independence of at-risk individuals and families across the spectrum of need, challenge, and crisis.

“So often, legal or social welfare or therapeutic approaches are not enough or sufficient on their own,” said Dr. Schindler, an attorney specializing in elder and disabilities law who has training in social work. “Each can be effective in some way, but not in a whole way, and not give a complete sort of intervention and solution.”

Since its founding in 2015, MARVA has ingrained itself into Israel’s legal and social welfare ecosystem, offering protections and guidance to – for example – older adults undergoing or at risk of abuse or neglect, people with dementia and Alzheimer’s and their families, Holocaust survivors, and young adults with mental or abuse challenges.

A small part of its casework – but one that is expected to grow – is in the realm of “supported decision making,” an alternative to guardianship that assists older people or those with mental or cognitive disabilities to preserve their independence, liberties and autonomy. In fact, MARVA is in a two-year project with two other organizations – JDC-Israel Unlimited and Mosaica ­– to deploy and utilize the practice more nationally throughout Israel.

The organization has built relationships with nearly 50 municipalities throughout the country, working with and enhancing the services of social welfare agencies and stepping into cases. Last year alone, MARVA reached over 2,100 people through personal assistance and casework, and more than 4,000 people through public lecture, advocacy, and education programs.

Its reach continues to expand, sensitive to the fact that Israel’s peripheral regions have less access to services, even though there may be greater need due to lower socio-economic profiles. With Good People Fund support, MARVA recently opened a center in Safed – in the Galilee region of northern Israel – and plans to open another one in the far south.

Six years since its establishment, MARVA has put into practice what was mere theory, formalizing networks of support and activating connections to serve the most vulnerable.

“We didn’t invent this, but we weren’t willing to leave it in the books either,” Dr. Schindler said, adding that marva is also the Hebrew word for Salvia, a healing plant. “Ideas can be beautiful, but it’s more important to implement them in the real world.

“People meet crisis and as much as we can help and empower them with sensitivity and give them all they need so they can continue living their lives with dignity and agency, that is our goal. Life can be complicated and people need help and assistance and that’s simply what we try to do.”

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz

There’s a fitness club in Maryland that stands apart from your usual corner gym. At SPIRIT Club, individuals with physical and developmental disabilities are lifting weights, doing aerobics, and working with personal trainers in an environment that prizes diversity, respect and inclusion. SPIRIT (Social-Physical-Interactive-Respectful-Integrated-Teamwork) Club Founder Jared Ciner talks about how his work as a fitness instructor and with individuals with special needs coalesced into SPIRIT Club and the ancillary SPIRIT Club Foundation – a Good People Fund grantee – to ensure that physical health and socialization be accessible to all.

An unexpected moment of sadness and isolation visited Dr. Anita Shkedi as thoughts of her son Jonathan – an Israel Defense Forces soldier who lost his life in conflict – overwhelmed her.

At the time, she was at an equine center she had founded on the Israeli coast to advance the practice of therapeutic horseback riding. A Pinto horse named Starlight sensed her distress and came close.

“I may have started to cry, as feelings were coming up in me,” she remembered. “She put her head up against me. She pushed into me and we were bonded. As I let my feelings out, she was telling me she was there for me.”

There on the cover of Dr. Shkedi’s just-published book, Horses Heal PTSD – Walking New Paths, is a picture of that very moment. A documentary filmmaker, who happened to be on the property that day, captured it.

Considering that Dr. Shkedi is an established authority on the relational history between humans and horses – and the immense mental and physical healing benefits that can flow from it – the fact that she herself was the recipient at a time of raw vulnerability is remarkable, and makes the book itself even more passionately grounded.

“I will never forget it,” she said. “It was one of the most emotional and genuine moments I’ve had with a horse. It was like together we were not in this universe.”

It is of this relationship that she writes over 238 pages of contextual histories and case studies of how PTSD – afflicting all manner of people from children who have been sexually abused, and soldiers who saw and endured the horrors of conflict, to women who have been raped, and youth living with domestic violence – can be mitigated through purposefully designed interaction with horses, including caring for and riding them, and creating bonds.

The research and practice is colloquially known as therapeutic horseback riding, and more formally as Equine Assisted Activities and/or Therapy (EAA/T). Dr. Shkedi – a pioneer in the discipline – adds to the growing literature on the subject with the new book.

“It is heavy stuff,” she said. “But I hope to the lay reader, this will be almost a self-help book. People have multiple traumas and they spend a lot of time trying to shut them out and avoid the monsters coming to the surface. We need to deal with them and instill hope.

“You can’t quick fix PTSD. You have to work it through a process until you can manage it so it doesn’t take over every part of your brain. That is my aim, by using our relationship with horses and the non-verbal communication that occurs to restore trust and build healing.”

The book is Dr. Shkedi’s second. In 2012, she authored Traumatic Brain Injury and Therapeutic Riding, a more clinical examination of how horse-based therapies can be used to help people suffering severe head injuries.

In 2003, Dr. Shkedi and her husband, Giora, founded the Israel National Therapeutic Riding Association (INTRA) – a veteran and longtime grantee organization of The Good People Fund – as a national center for EAA/T in Israel.

It serves a full spectrum of children, youth and adults with significant life challenges to improve their long-term physical, social, and emotional well being, and is particular known for its work with IDF soldiers with PTSD.

Of the book’s reception so far, Dr. Shkedi said she is already in contact with people seeking help. One woman in Texas, for example, reached out because her 10-year-old son is experiencing PTSD due to multiple physical and psychological traumas.

“If through this book I can give hope to those who are suffering, then it’s done its job.”

Dr. Shkedi will read from her new book and answer questions on a live Zoom event at 1 pm Eastern on Wednesday, May 5.  To register, visit www.anitashkedi.com.

By H. Glenn Rosenkrantz