The Good People Fund
The Spanish idiom “palante” can be translated as “go for it!”, an appropriate name for Yurani Sandoval’s organization, Women Palante which mentors and inspires Latina women as they pursue entrepreneurial ventures. The program includes not only critical financial expertise but also focuses on personal wellness, an often-ignored, but important tool leading to success.
Our matching grant is directed to administrative costs.
In his youth, Eliyahu Ben Zion was drawn to the power of the sea and became an Israeli surfing champion. At 19, he adopted a more religious lifestyle and eventually was encouraged to use his surfing talents for something new.
Throughout Israel’s religious communities there are disaffected youth who have left school and community. With no support system they often fall prey to anti-social behavior. It is for these youth, both young men and women, that Eliyahu created a unique therapeutic program. “It is amazing to see how with just one small push on the surfboard you can see a child succeed,” Eliyahu says. As he puts it, “The obstacles of the sea teach them to cope with the barriers and difficulties in their lives.”
“When I enter the water, I empty all of my thoughts,” says Dovid, one of the program’s graduates.
Our funds are used for a new class for girls.
Located in Sheldon, Illinois, the Zumwalt Acres farm has been in the Zumwalt family for over 150 years. Today, a new generation of farmers, led by Gavi and Remi Welbel, recent college graduates who have studied advanced conservation methods, are using environmental farming practices such as agroforestry, cultivating mushrooms, and implementing sustainable soil management practices to build a better food system and tackle climate change. With visions of a hopeful future, their apprenticeship program brings together inspiring and enthusiastic young people ages 18-27, to farm the land, conduct research, establish best practices and more, all within a Jewish framework.
Our matching funds are directed to stipends for participants in the program.
Asher Lovy grew up in the insular Haredi community of Borough Park, Brooklyn, and was sexually, physically and mentally abused by his mother.
The silence within that community – where discussion of such aggressions was neither welcome nor acknowledged – was unbearable. “I needed to go out and yell about it,” says Asher, who now heads ZA’AKAH (Hebrew for “outcry”) to advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community.
ZA’AKAH raises awareness of child sexual abuse, creates channels to address it and support survivors … and seeks to break the silence. A volunteer-based Shabbos and Yom Tov hotline provides peer-to-peer support, for example, and the organization helped pass the landmark Child Victims Acts in New York and New Jersey to give survivors a path to justice. Our funds cover administrative expenses.
Evie Litwok arrived in NYC penniless, homeless and jobless after time in Federal prison. She knows well that establishing a life after incarceration is challenging and frequently defeating, especially for women, LGBTQ+ individuals and others facing systemic and cultural disadvantages and the stigma of having been in in prison.
She used her experience as a social activist – culled from years in the women’s and gay rights movements – to establish Witness to Mass Incarceration to advocate for prison reform, and to help those just released from the penal system move more smoothly back into society.
WMI runs several projects helping those returning to open society as well as those who have been free for
some time and trying to rebuild their lives. The Suitcase Project provides a cellphone, laptop and gift cards to
purchase essential items. WMI’s latest program, The MAP, is a unique online directory of businesses owned by formerly incarcerated individuals.
Our funds underwrite administrative expenses and supermarket gift cards distributed to newly released individuals.
Perhaps the most profound lesson we learn each day is that people’s lives can disintegrate precipitously, with little warning and, all too often, with little hope for change. Those with the fewest resources are at greatest risk.
Sometimes we learn about these situations from the very organizations we support; other sources are social workers or doctors with whom we have developed a close relationship and who know that when no other resources are available we can be “a place to turn where all else fails.” Sometimes this means saving a life⎯literally.
In addition to “keeping the lights on,” we also provide emergency funds for food, medical needs, summer camp and rent. Sometimes, by joining forces with other resources, we are able to mitigate even more serious needs, such as purchasing a car for an otherwise self-sufficient victim of domestic violence, or paying tuition for young men and women who have chosen to leave their insular, ultra-religious community, losing both family and friends in the process.
In each case, we know our funds have made a significant difference in helping to restore dignity and hope to people who far too often have so little.
Our Journal of Good 2024 could not have been published at a better time. As we struggle with so much–a war, widespread hatred and political dysfunction, its stories of visionaries driving positive change… and those of individuals, families and communities whose lives are altered for the better, will move you.
