JDC ACCEPTS DONATIONS FOR CHILE EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS

JDC Experts Assessing Impact On Chilean Jewish Community

NEW YORK, NY, February 28, 2010—In the wake of today’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the world’s largest Jewish humanitarian assistance organization, announced that it will collect funds for relief efforts, said JDC CEO Steven Schwager.

"Our hearts go out to the people of Chile and, as we have recently done in Haiti, JDC will leverage our strong partnerships in the region, including the local Chilean Jewish community, to provide a quick and effective response to the needs of those affected,” said Schwager. “We are receiving up-to-the-minute reports from JDC's Latin America team on the ground, including the impact of the earthquake on Chile's Jewish community.”

JDC provides technical assistance to many Latin American countries including Chile, and is conducting a full and rapid assessment of the situation by working closely with Chile’s Jewish community to determine critical next steps based on immediate needs of the hardest-hit areas.

Chile’s diverse Jewish community, made up of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, is mainly located in Santiago, with Jewish families also living in affected cities like Concepcion and Valpariso-Vina. The community supports a JCC, two Jewish day schools, synagogues, and has reportedly canceled Purim festivities as a result of the disaster.

JDC relief efforts are part of its International Development Program (IDP), which provides immediate relief and long-term assistance to victims of natural and manmade disasters.

To Make a Contribution:
Online: https://mailhost.jdcny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.jdc.org/donation
By Phone: 212-687-6200
By Mail: check payable to
JDC-Chile Earthquake Relief
P O Box 4124
New York, NY 10163

About the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) 
Since 1914, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has given global expression to the principle that all Jews are responsible for one another. Working today in over 70 countries, JDC acts on behalf of North America’s Jewish communities and others to rescue Jews in danger, provide relief to those in distress, revitalize overseas Jewish communities and help Israel overcome the social challenges of its most vulnerable citizens. JDC also provides non-sectarian emergency relief and long-term development assistance worldwide. For more information, please log on to: www.JDC.org

'How Together We Make Things Happen'

In a recent post on the blog, From Leslie's Laptop, Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, President of Women's Philanthropy at the United Jewish Communities of Metrowest New Jersey shares some highlights from the JFNA Heart 2 Heart mission to Israel, including meeting with Judy Amit, JDC's Chief Operating Officer for Program and Budgets to hear about JDC's work in Haiti. 

You can read what Leslie has to say at How Together We Make Things Happen.

UPDATED: New Video: JDC Aids Victims of Earthquake in Haiti And An Update from the Ground

A new video highlighting JDC's current efforts in Haiti.   



You can also watch it at this LINK on YouTube.

UPDATE: Steve Schwager, CEO, shares this update from Judy Amit, Chief Operating Officer for Program and Budgets who recently travelled to Haiti.

In the six weeks since Haiti was hit by the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, JDC has been active on the ground, providing urgently needed medical care and equipment, food, water, shelter, and other basics of life. We have raised more than $5.5 million, with additional funds continuing to come in via the web and from our Federation partners across North America.

A more formal update and a brand new four-minute video will be ready shortly. In the interim I thought I would share with you a portion of JDC Chief Operating Officer Judy Amit’s recent report on her visit to Haiti:

We arrived back from Haiti early last week after an extremely difficult trip, both emotionally and physically. The devastation that we see on TV is nothing compared to the reality on the ground. Port-au-Prince has become a tent city where every available piece of land that is clear of rubble has become a refuge for displaced persons.

The goals of this visit were to monitor existing projects, to review and allocate funding to new projects, to gather information on emerging needs, and to enhance contacts with other NGOs and government entities such as USAID, and to the local and international business community.

We have chosen excellent partners on the ground and all of them are implementing JDC-funded programs under extremely difficult conditions. To date, the bulk of JDC's allocated funding (over $1.7 million) has been designated to provide emergency relief—medical aid and supplies, water, food, shelter…the basics. As we drove through Port-au-Prince, it was amazing to see the water tanks that JDC funded in the tent cities graffitied with donors' names, the JDC logo, and the American and Israeli flags. More important is that these tanks are being constantly refilled with clean drinking water. To date we are supplying some 300,000 gallons.

During our visit we allocated money to ProDev, a local NGO, to establish 10 temporary schools with Haitian teachers and university students in the tent cities. These programs will help meet the critical need to get children back into a structured framework. We have supplied funding for one month, but I believe that this will need to be extended, as many of the schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed, and the Haitian Ministry of Education does not yet have a strategy and plan for getting the children back to school.

We also made contact with the well-known Zanme Lasante/Partners in Health (PIH), which is the largest Haitian NGO, established by Dr. Paul Farmer. We will be providing PIH with critically needed ambulances, and are verifying with them additional opportunities for funding, including a feeding program for displaced children living in the periphery.

I have been in contact with Jon North, CEO of Heart to Heart International (H2H), to learn whether the organization is in need of additional funding for their medical teams. A JDC partner based in Kansas City, H2H’s teams are working in towns in the periphery which were badly damaged by the earthquake and are currently underserved. We met with a number of H2H professionals during the trip and can tell you the organization is doing absolutely wonderful work. Something that made a particular impact on me was meeting one of the female doctors working with the H2H team in the Port-au-Prince stadium. She described the wonderful work that the Israeli field hospital did, and became very emotional describing to me how she was invited to spend Shabbat dinner in the company of the Israeli staff.

As I have alluded in this anecdote, JDC's additional value over the past month, over and above the funding, has been in creating synergies between our partners, thus leveraging contacts.

I’d like to share two concrete examples that have resulted in positive impact:

EcoWorks International was in urgent need of additional supplies for their Haiti relief program, which extends beyond the hospital feeding program sponsored by JDC. At our request, AFYA, already a JDC partner, has now sent in a container sponsored by JDC, which includes school supplies for children in the hospital. These supplies are not so much for school work as they are a therapeutic vehicle for children (and adults) to write and to draw to express their pain and fears and begin the process of emotional healing. The hospital is also being supplied with much-needed medicines and medical supplies including sutures, antibiotics, and painkillers. Clothes are also being supplied for all 650 children in orphanages where EcoWorks is operating.

The second area of cooperation is in the needs assessment for the rehabilitation of the approximately 2,500 amputees following the earthquake. JDC has connected the AFYA Foundation, which conducted an assessment last week, with a group of rehab specialists from Magen David Adom (funded by JDC) who are on the ground in Haiti at the moment. The MDA group also visited what remains of the Bernard Mevs hospital, a private hospital serving the poor, where the JDC-funded EcoWorks feeding program is being operated. The Israeli team greatly impressed the senior doctors with their high level of expertise. They were completely hands-on, seeing patients, examining their wounds, and showing two Haitian nurses how to dress and wrap the wounds properly so they not only heal but also take the proper shape so as to be fitted with a prosthesis.

The Torah teaches us that Jews have a responsibility to repair the world. Irv and I believe our work in Haiti clearly shows we, as a community, take that responsibility to heart.

An Exclusive JDC Ambassadors Circle Event

JDC Ambassadors Circle

would like to invite you to join us for an exclusive lunch in Manhattan

Monday March 1st from 12 noon to 2pm 

You will have the opportunity to meet with and hear from Zoya Shvartzman, JDC's Field Manager for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania and the Former Yugoslav Republics.

The lunch will be held in a private location in midtown. It will be kosher-meat with vegetarian options and the cost is $50 per person. You must RSVP to save a spot.

Zoya is warm, intelligent, articulate and engaging - she receives rave reviews as a presenter and briefer on Jewish life. This promises to be an exciting and memorable lunch and we hope you can join us.

To reserve your spot, please contact Dov Ben-Shimon at dov@jdcny.org or (973) 929-2939.

Jewish Renewal Over Tea

In this briefing from Asher Ostrin, Executive Director for FSU Programs, Asher shares a story about Jewish identity and renewal from our current Ralph I. Goldman Fellow, Violetta Shmulenzon. 

Dear all,

When our teacher Ralph Goldman retired as Executive Vice President of the JDC the board honored him in a way that strikes anyone who knows Ralph as extremely appropriate. A fellowship was established in his name for a young person who shows extraordinary promise for a career in the Jewish community. I have had the privilege of working directly with a number of fellows through the years. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my JDC career.

This year's fellow is Violetta Shmulenzon. A native New Yorker, she has spent the last 2 months in Odessa. This past week I read her blog that uses a reunion with a member of her family who did not emigrate from the region as a stimulus for ruminating on an issue dear to JDC: Jewish renewal in the FSU. It's an issue that has appeared in these weeklies in various forms through the years. Her piece is one of the finest and most sensitive on the topic that I have ever come across, and I am therefore sharing it with you in its entirety. Violetta blogs at http://rigidsearch-violetta.blogspot.com/

Sunday, January 31, 2010
Jewish Renewal Over Tea with my Great-Aunt
Early today I was woken up by a knock at my door. Startled, I jumped to see who it is; it is rare for me to get visitors I am not expecting in Odessa- as I don’t really know too many people. To my surprise it was my Great-Aunt. [I had recently found out I have a great-Aunt, with a daughter and two grand-children- my cousins who remained in Odessa after my family’s departure in the 1970’s.] We had talked on the phone, and I mentioned where I lived and were planning to meet, and would hopefully visit the Jewish Cemetery- where many of my great-grandparents are buried. But here she was standing at my door, completely unexpected – my family in Odessa!

As I welcomed her in she began telling me how she had just walked the entire building asking for the Jewish apartment (oy…now that the whole building was awoken due to me and knew I was Jewish, I am definitely going to have some hostile neighbors).

As we sat in the kitchen over a cup of tea talking, I showing her pictures of my grandmother, aunt, and mother (over 30 years since she has seen any of them), she telling me stories of how my grandfather’s workshop (he was an artist) was right underneath her door, and how he and she would talk every afternoon, he in his workshop and she on her balcony.

Photos and Videos from the JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan - Part III

Our final post of pictures and videos from the 2010 JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan.

Our next mission will be to Cuba, June 3-6, 2010. For more information please contact ambassadors@jdc.org. 

Uzbekistan

The Group in Bukhara

The Samarkand Hesed team

Home hospitality in Samarkand

Photos and Videos from the JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan - Part II

More photos and videos from the 2010 JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

A Warm Home, a JDC program to connect the elderly in Tashkent

Photos from the JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan - Part I

We would like to welcome back everyone who joined us on the 2010 JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan.

TURKEY

The Group at the Hilton Istanbul

In the Byzantine underground water cistern

On the road with the JDC

Lee Livingston, President of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County in New Jersey recently wrote an article about his experience on the JDC Ambassadors Circle Mission to Turkey and Uzbekistan on the Jewish Federation's blog.

The group in Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Check out the article at ON THE ROAD WITH JDC.

JDC ADDRESSES CRITICAL NEEDS IN HAITI AS TEAM RETURNS TO NYC FROM FIRST FIELD VISIT

$3.2 Million Raised for Continuing and Long-Term Relief

NEW YORK, NY, February 1, 2010—Among the Haitians being aided by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and its partners in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake, are teenagers Pierre and Moise, clients of a JDC-supported food program by EcoWorks International being run on the remains of a local hospital. Both recovering from surgery to their badly broken legs, these two young men, who lost family members and their homes, are receiving regular meals and water as they recuperate. Like hundreds of thousands of other victims, Pierre and Moise are struggling to regain their bearings amidst the rubble that just two weeks ago had been homes, schools, hospitals, markets, and places of worship.

JDC, the world’s largest Jewish humanitarian assistance organization, and its expanded group of partners on the ground, are delivering water, medicine, food and critical relief to victims in Port-au-Prince and the outlying areas. The JDC team, just returned from Haiti, is helping to assess immediate and long-term needs as JDC begins to plan for rebuilding efforts.

To date, JDC has raised $3.2 million for Haiti relief and has expanded its group of partners performing humanitarian assistance work on the ground. They include:

• International Rescue Committee will use JDC support to fund several water supply projects that will provide sources of clean, potable water in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding community.
• Through the ProDev Foundation, a local Haitian NGO, 20 JDC-sponsored water tanks will ensure clean drinking water for people living in tent villages.
• A JDC-allotted grant to Chabad-Lubavitch of the Dominican Republic that funded the delivery of much-needed milk for children in Haiti.

Through existing partners on the ground, JDC continues to channel critical aid to Haitians in need. EcoWorks International's feeding program is bringing cooked meals and water to 250 patients and their families daily, and providing rice and other food to 4,000 orphans.

An expanded partnership with Heart to Heart International, which includes the purchase of four trucks, is ensuring that medical relief and supplies reach isolated communities. JDC-funded equipment helped the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces complete the mission of its field hospital, which was operational within 10 hours of the earthquake.

JDC continues to coordinate its activities with the White House, the Department of State, USAID, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Israeli relief agencies, the United Nations, and the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief. These efforts are part of JDC’s International Development Program (IDP), which provides immediate relief and long-term assistance to victims of natural and manmade disasters.

You can read about their experience in Haiti by visiting JDC's blog, No Passport Required.

Photos from Haiti

The latest photos from Haiti.

For the latest news from our team on the ground, please go to JDC's new blog, No Passport Required. 

AN EXCLUSIVE JDC AMBASSADORS CIRCLE EVENT

JDC Ambassadors Circle

would like to invite you to join us for an exclusive lunch in Manhattan

Monday March 1st from 12 noon to 2pm

You will have the opportunity to meet with and hear from Zoya Shvartzman, JDC's Field Manager for Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania and the Former Yugoslav Republics.

The lunch will be held in a private location in midtown. It will be kosher-meat with vegetarian options and the cost is $50 per person. You must RSVP to save a spot.

Zoya is warm, intelligent, articulate and engaging - she receives rave reviews as a presenter and briefer on Jewish life. This promises to be an exciting and memorable lunch and we hope you can join us.

To reserve your spot, please contact Dov Ben-Shimon at dov@jdcny.org or (973) 929-2939.

The Reward Comes in the Form of Accomplishing Work Itself

An op-ed piece by JDC Board member, Betsy Sheerr, recently published in The Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia's Jewish newspaper. 

The Reward Comes in the Form of Accomplishing Work Itself
January 28, 2010
By Betsy R. Sheerr

Millions of lives -- and the future of a tiny nation -- are still in jeopardy.

No, we're not talking about Israel, but Haiti -- that small, impoverished island nation.

Within hours of a catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti last week, Israel and the United States led the way in rescue and recovery. President Barack Obama spoke movingly: "In times of tragedy, the U.S. steps forward and helps. That is who we are. That is what we do."

The Israeli Defense Force was among the first on the ground, setting up a field hospital praised by CBS as "the Rolls Royce of emergency medical care," with medical and psychosocial support teams deployed as soon as there was safe passage. How fitting for Israel to help a small country that was among the first to recognize its existence in 1947!

The American Jewish response was also swift and generous. Within hours, money started pouring into a vast array of Jewish organizations, including those that comprise the 45-member Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief. These donors wanted their gift to be part of the Jewish response to a non-Jewish population's suffering. This is a fitting tribute to what our tradition teaches us: to save a single life is to save an entire world.

In this first week, the Jewish Federations of North American reported raising more than $2 million for the relief efforts of its overseas humanitarian relief partner, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. An additional $2.2 million has been donated directly to JDC online, by mail, phone or text. The American Jewish World Service has raised more than $2 million as well.