Sgt. Adam Burke returned from Iraq with severe PTSD, TBI (traumatic brain injury) and a Purple Heart. Despite those very serious injuries he could never forget the promise he made during the earliest and darkest days of his recovery…if he returned home alive, he would help others and give back.

Recovery was slow and painful but when he recalled his youth growing up on a blueberry farm, Adam decided to return to farming and in time, began to heal from his trauma. If this work could help him, then why not others? Horticultural therapy is a well-respected complement to traditional medical therapies so could the physical labor performed outdoors surrounded by nature prove also to be therapeutic? Were there other skills involving cognitive therapy that could help? It seemed as if Adam had developed an effective and valuable way to help other vets returning with similar disabilities.

Today, Veteran Farm located in Jacksonville, Florida, has one operating blueberry farm with a second farm nearly complete. With Jacksonville home to multiple Armed Forces facilities there is no shortage of injured soldiers to avail themselves of this excellent resource, and with the national agricultural environment in desperate need of skilled workers and entrepreneurs, it seems as if Adam’s idea is a winner all around.

The Good People Fund was so impressed with Adam and his efforts that we underwrote the purchase of thousands of pots he will use to start the blueberry bushes for the second farm. Within the next few months we hope to visit Adam in Jacksonville (FL) and see the true "fruits of his labors".

For more details about Veteran Farm we recommend you view this YouTube interview with Adam…it’s worth the time.

This morning, as we prepared to head to the kitchen to cook that one big last meal before the fast, the phone rang. On the line was Scarlett Fave, the Social Services coordinator for the Caridad Center in South Florida. Caridad Center is dedicated to the needs of many low-income, working poor families in that region. Scarlett knows that when she has an emergency situation she can call on the Good People Fund and if we can, we will help.

This morning’s call involved a family on the verge of losing their modest trailer home. The husband works in construction but has been laid off for the past three months. The wife is employed as a housekeeper but the woman she worked for has moved and she now finds herself out of work. The husband is assured of new work next month but with three children to feed, this otherwise stable family could lose their home because of the fees they owe to the trailer park.

Could we help?

On the eve of the holiest day of the year it felt incredibly good to tell Scarlett that, on behalf of all of our generous donors, we will send a check to prevent this family from becoming homeless.

"When asked what I wanted for my birthday, I was blessed to be able to answer truthfully, "I don’t know.""

Hannah, who comes from a family of creative and generous mitzvah-makers, wrote last week and asked if there was some young person in Israel with whom she could "share" her birthday. We were delighted and started to search for just the perfect place where Hannah’s donation could be used to give a child something which their parent(s) could not provide on their own.

It did not take long for Libby Reichman of Big Brothers, Big Sisters in Israel to get back to me with the story of Liora* whose father died when she was 6 years old. Today, Liora is a young teen and her mother struggles daily to provide for her and her younger twin brothers. When asked, Liora’s Mom admitted that she had no funds to buy some new winter clothes so with Hannah’s donation sent in honor of her birthday, and the Good People Fund’s matching dollars to add to Hannah’s generosity, it looks as if a few children in Jerusalem will now have some new warm clothes for the upcoming winter weather.

What a great way to celebrate, Hannah! Yom Huledet Sameach!

*A pseudonym

He’s a National Guard combat vet who has done three tours of duty over the past several years. It was only this past December when he actually returned to his young family from Iraq. With a job, a wife, a three year-old and a new baby on the way things were going smoothly. Until – premature labor set in and his wife delivered the infant seven weeks prematurely. With underdeveloped lungs, the baby was quickly put on a ventilator and transferred to a specialized hospital almost two hours away. What was once a stable home situation has now been turned upside down. Unable to work with the time spent traveling back and forth to the hospital each day and the stress of having such a sick child presents immediate financial challenges to this young family. The soldier’s employer will grant him Family Leave but there is bureaucracy involved and the paychecks are not yet here. What do you do when you have nowhere to turn? Without the car insurance premium paid there will be no transportation to make the daily trip to the hospital and the gas and food bills are considerable.

When Randi Cairns from Home Front Hearts shared this story with us yesterday we wanted to help. Home Front Hearts is dedicated to helping the military family and raising awareness in local communities of the unique needs of the "weekend warrior". Though she received generous offers of gift cards for gas and food from others who heard the story, the family was still faced with a car insurance premium that needed to be paid. The Good People Fund has just sent off the premium with the hope that the baby will thrive and the family gets back on its feet once again.

We have 5 people needing eye operations and have 5 matching gifts of $200 each. So if that offer is still good to match, let me know and I can send money out (I have already sent out one payment for an operation as the woman is in her 90s!).

It happened so quickly…in the span of about 15 minutes, 5 elderly Jews (ranging in age from mid 80’s to their mid 90’s) living out the last years of their lives in remote communities in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, will be given the gift of sight! When Zane Buzby of The Survivor Mitzvah Project in LA wrote this morning, she told us that our challenge of finding donors who would cover half the cost of cataract surgery was achieved. Each operation costs $400 (a sum that most of these very poor elders could never imagine amassing) and with the Good People Fund’s $1000 challenge grant, five people will benefit.

Zane’s deeply personal connections to so many elderly Survivors in "the old country" no doubt accounts for their very survival…

It is direct mitzvah work with no bureaucracy and full transparency-just the way we like it!

How many of us have ever heard of Suriname?

If you have, did you know that there is a Jewish community there?

In fact, Suriname is not only the smallest country in South America, but also home to the oldest surviving Jewish community in the Americas.

Our friends at Kulanu who are dedicated to discovering and assisting little-known Jewish communities found in remote corners of the world, were in touch a few months ago to ask if we might be able to help with their latest Suriname project. When we learned what it was, we could not say no. Kulanu has initiated many different programs to awaken Jewish interest in the small community, but the one program that they so much wanted to make happen was a birthright Israel trip for 16 young adults. When birthright agreed to fund the trip and provide a Dutch-speaking guide, it was left to Kulanu to find the funds which would get these young travelers to Miami where they would catch the flight to Israel. The local community would do some of their own fund-raising and the Good People Fund offered Kulanu a $2000 matching grant to get them on the way to the full $12,000 they needed.

It didn’t take long for others to step up and meet the challenge, and tomorrow 18 young people from Suriname, along with an advisor, will depart for the Holy Land.

As one of them wrote:

…the family that I descend from came to Suriname at the end of the 17th century. I want to learn much more about Judaism. I just started to have lessons with Rabbi Haim Beliak who left a few weeks ago and now I study with Mr. Jules Donk, the president of the community.

I’m very excited about the Birthright trip to Israel; I can’t wait to see Israel. I’m hoping the trip will become an unforgettable experience.

We know it will be….