The IDF medical team in Haiti was joined on Monday by nine volunteers from Los Angeles. IDF

The Haitian earthquake has galvanized fund raising at the Krieger Schechter Day School in suburban Baltimore.

The Jewish elementary school normally collects about $200 per week from its 420 students, and the money goes to various charities. But when the school’s headmaster, Paul Schneider, decided to direct last week’s giving to the American Red Cross to help the Haitian relief effort, the weekly tally jumped to $4,600.

“A fair amount of it was from children cracking open their piggybanks,” Schneider told JTA.

Over the past week, the American Jewish community has cracked open its collective piggybank as Jewish organizations small and large have raised millions of dollars to help in the relief effort following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince last week, killing an estimated tens of thousands in Haiti.

Dozens of Jewish organizations from the Reform movement to the Orthodox Union have set up links on their Websites for constituents to donate money toward the relief effort.

Most have directed their giving to the American Jewish World Service and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — two U.S.-based organizations that do work in the developing world — or to IsraAid, the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, a coordinating organization for 17 Israeli and Jewish humanitarian groups that has sent a team of rescue workers to Haiti. (For a list of resources, see page 22.)

As of Tuesday morning, AJWS had raised an estimated $2.4 million to distribute to the grassroots economic development organizations it already works with in Haiti.

Lt. Col. Dr. Avi Abergel, a gynecologist with the Israeli aid mission to Haiti, holds a premature baby delivered in the IDF field hospital in Haiti on Sunday. IDF

The JDC, the foreign aid agency backed by the Jewish Federations of North America, has brought in nearly $1.5 million that it will direct to the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, which is sending money to the Israeli field hospitals in Haiti. The coalition is composed of some 30 organizations, including the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, World ORT, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, AJWS and the American Jewish Committee.

While some relief efforts have been slow to reach Haiti in the aftermath of the quake, on the ground Jewish dollars already are at work. The AJWS says that all of the 10 organizations with which it normally works in Haiti are now in emergency mode and have shifted focus to help in the aid effort.

For instance, one AJWS-funded group in the Dominican Republic that normally focuses on helping Haitians in the Dominican Republic has formed a caravan from that country to Port-au-Prince to bring feminine hygiene supplies, diapers, and other needed items into Haiti.

Aside from providing funding for the Israel Defense Forces and IsraAid field hospitals in Haiti, which Israeli officials say can treat up to 500 patients per day, the money from JDC and the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief is going to organizations such as Heart to Heart International and Partners in Health to provide emergency medical supplies.

If past experience is any guide, some of the money the Jewish community raises in the coming weeks for Haiti relief will not be spent for months or even years. In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, B’nai B’rith International raised $900,000, which it spent on relief and rebuilding efforts over the next four years. Similarly, the JDC took five years to spend the $18 million it raised following the tsunami.

The immediate days following a disaster tend to be the most critical for fund-raising. About 90 percent of the $18 million the JDC raised for Southeast Asia was raised in the month immediately following the tsunami.

The president of AJWS, Ruth Messinger, said it becomes more difficult to raise money when the issue disappears from the headlines.

“This is when most people get alerted to the situation,” she said. “They want to know who is raising money and who has a plan for what is being raised and what they are doing and who can explain to us what is different and discrete about what we are doing.”

Meanwhile, organizations and donors large and small are pitching in. Billionaire George Soros, who is Jewish, gave $4 million to the relief effort through his Open Society Institute. The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring and the New Yiddish Repertory are organizing a benefit concert later this month with the goal of raising $20,000.

The swiftness of the response is due in part to the Internet and the flourishing of online giving.

By Tuesday, AJWS raised $1.8 million from more than 16,000 people via its Website. The JUF-Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago raised $283,000 in five days from 2,200 donors. Almost all of it — nearly $260,000 – came in online, from 2,058 individuals. UJA-Federation of Greater Toronto raised $173,240 so far, much of it online.

As of Wednesday, UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey had accumulated pledges and donations through its Website and by mail, amounting to more than $56,000, not counting several large gifts, one of $25,000. (See related story.)

Those involved in the fund-raising effort say the Jewish community’s gifts to the people of Haiti stem from Jewish values.

“Here is a vast group of people in desperate need, and we are committed to helping them, and in helping them we are bettering the world,” said the executive director of the Workmen’s Circle, Ann Toback. “It combines our cultural identity with our commitment to social justice and improving the world.”

Giving also provides a teaching opportunity, said the Krieger Schechter school’s Schneider.

“I think some of the older children understand what is happening in Haiti. I have talked to them about it. They are concerned. They wonder how these people are going to survive, what will they eat? Will they still be alive when someone finally comes to try to find them?” he said. “We talk to the children all of the time the importance of human life and ‘pikuach nefesh’” — saving lives. “The children know all human life is sacred, not just Jewish life. This is an opportunity to teach that.”

JTA

As the need for aid in Haiti persists, local individuals and groups continue to mobilize.

UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey is still accepting donations for The Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. All monies are sent directly to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. As of Tuesday, the group had raised $123,676. Send donations through the UJA-NNJ Website, www.ujannj.org/Haiti, or by mail.

Teaneck resident and Judaic artist Deborah Ugoretz reports that her studio-mates have organized a fund-raising event entitled Small Works for a Big Cause: Artists Unite to Help Haiti. Organizers are asking people not only to attend the exhibit/sale but, if possible, to contribute a small piece of art. The event will take place on Jan. 31 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at BrassWorks, 105 Grove St. in Montclair. According to Ugoretz, the group seeks 2-D works, no larger than 12” on any side, and works will be sold for a suggested $50 minimum donation. All proceeds will go to Haiti earthquake relief organizations. Those interested in donating their artwork should send an e-mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Combine the opportunity to raise money for Haiti with Zumba, the Latin-inspired dance fitness phenomenon, at “Zumba for Haiti” at the Bergen County YJCC on Feb. 21 from 12 noon to 1:15 p.m. Minimum donation is $18, payable to UJA-NNJ and designated for its earthquake relief fund. Zumba will be led by Missy Avalo, with guest instructors Shelley Capener and Anna Alon. The YJCC is at 605 Pascack Road, Township of Washington. For more information, call (201) 666-6610, ext. 291.

Northeast Podiatry Group and the Fair Lawn Jewish Center/Congregation Bnai Israel are collecting emergency medical supplies for Haiti’s burn and orthopedic trauma victims. Their goal is to fill a tractor-trailer with donations of medical supplies or used orthopedic equipment. The nearest drop-off point is the Jewish Center, at 10-10 Norma Ave. in Fair Lawn. For more information, send an e-mail to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit www.burnadvocates.org. Donors can also choose to contribute money to help defray shipping and distribution.

From left, Maria Pineda, Damary Collado, Eve Domercant, and Carlos Sanchez.

Former Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes has asked that those who want to donate material goods to the people of Haiti bring new or gently used clothing and baby supplies in plastic bags to his home at 250 Allison Court in Englewood. Wildes also urges people to contribute to the American Red Cross International Response Fund for Haitian Relief (www.redcross.org).

Twin brothers Seth and Philip Aronson will perform at Hamsa restaurant, 7 West Railroad Ave., in Tenafly on Wednesday, Feb. 3 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Admission is $10 at the door. All proceeds will be donated toward Haitian relief efforts. The duo, dubbed the Aronson Twins, grew up in Tenafly and now live in Closter with their families. In addition to writing and arranging their own songs, they frequently perform in the New York area.

Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), a member of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, met with the new administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dr. Rajiv Shah, and Ambassador Craig Kelly, principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, to discuss the current situation on the ground in Haiti. Said Rothman, “The international response to this crisis is a promising start, but there is still much more work to be done. USAID has set up a Website at haiti.usaid.gov where the latest information can be found on the situation in Haiti. Also, in order to help family members affected by this tragedy, my offices in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. remain available to help in any way we can at (201) 646-0808 and (202) 225-5061 respectively.”

The Ramaz school in Manhattan reports that the school is collecting money to distribute to both the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the American Jewish World Service. In addition, some classes set aside time to recite tehillim, psalms, on behalf of the victims. The school held a special assembly during which students were educated about the tragedy and suggestions were made as to how students might help. Subsequently, a middle school student produced T-shirts reading “Hearts 4 Haiti” and will donate proceeds from sales to the JDC. An upper school program included the reading of a prayer specially composed by British Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks to mark the tragedy. The school is also organizing relief efforts including food and clothing collections.

Palisades Medical Center staff members helped organize a medical mission and donation of medical supplies that will be delivered to Jimani on the Dominican Republic/Haitian border, to aid the victims of the earthquake. The donation will be brought to Jimani by representatives from Guardians of Healing and the Haitian-American Charitable Alliance, which scheduled medical missions for Jan. 31 through Feb. 7, and later in March. The Palisades Medical Center donation includes splints, bandages, surgical gowns, and other medical supplies and equipment.

Bruce Prince’s family has been in business for many years. The owners of Prince Embroidery, founded in Hudson County in the 1920s, they watched as the once-thriving garment industry became “uprooted.”

With the price of labor far less overseas, said Prince, a Teaneck resident and owner of the Teaneck General Store, manufacturers began to send their business elsewhere.

“People there were working for small amounts of money,” he said. As a result, “the industry here shut down.”

Recently, the Teaneck shopkeeper realized that this was not just a matter of business.

“The reality hit us that people weren’t being given fair wages,” he said. “The people we employed here were unionized. We were mindful of labor practices. Now it’s cheaper, but for what reason?”

The reason, suggested Prince — who serves on the Fair Trade Teaneck Steering Committee together with other Teaneck residents and business owners — is that employers are engaging in unconscionable labor practices.

According to the group’s fact sheet: “Hundreds of thousands of pre-teen children are victims of trafficking and forced labor; impoverishment is notably the result of exploitation by local middlemen; predatory farming methods are destroying indigenous environments; [and] hazardous labor conditions expose workers to toxic chemicals, compel them to accept low pay, and prevent them from asserting their rights.”

That can be changed, says Dennis Klein, a Teaneck resident and professor of history at Kean College in Union.

Klein, director of Jewish studies at the college, organized the steering committee in the hope that Teaneck might become a fair trade town. According to the committee Website, “Just five establishments selling at least two fair trade product lines will raise Teaneck’s profile as an enlightened business and consumer community.”

The Kean professor said he has long been involved in social change initiatives. A chance encounter with Tim Blunk, owner of Teaneck’s Tiger Lily Flowers, “piqued his interest” in fair trade.

It’s a case where “folks at the local level can do something to help people far away,” he said, explaining that while the local group is part of a national and international movement, the issue is truly an opportunity to “think globally and act locally.”

“I like that approach,” he said, noting that in his visits not only to merchants and public organizations but to synagogues and Jewish schools as well, “we alert people to problems behind the products they’re buying and empower each one of us as local consumers to make choices.”

The idea of “making an ethical choice appeals directly to the Jewish community,” he said.

The steering committee fact sheet notes that “just by purchasing fair-trade certified products, consumers can tip the balance of market share that will favor just labor practices, fair prices, and sustainable farming methods … [defeating] the sources of the present human rights crisis.”

To help bring this about, the American Jewish World Service recently formed a partnership with Equal Exchange, a fair trade product supplier and worker-owned cooperative founded in 1986.

Announcing the partnership, AJWS issued a statement noting that “big companies can afford to significantly undersell smaller growers, who are then forced to lower their prices to the point where they can no longer remain in business.” Members of fair trade cooperatives, however, “receive fair prices for their crops and enjoy long-term trade relationships with trusted partners.”

The AJWS-Equal Exchange venture, Better Beans, was created to sell and distribute fairly traded kosher coffee and chocolate. Such programs exist to “create a global market for these farmers and provide them with access to the financial resources and assistance that they need to operate,” said the AJWS statement, adding that the project “allows congregations, community organizations, and individuals to order high-quality coffee and chocolate while supporting small growers and community-owned cooperatives in the developing world.”

To further this effort, the organization is encouraging the Jewish community to serve only Better Beans coffee and chocolate at their synagogues, schools, and local events. In addition to supporting small farmer co-ops, a portion of every pound of coffee or chocolate purchased through Better Beans will support the AJWS Fighting Hunger from the Ground Up campaign.

Klein pointed out that the Teaneck steering committee “actively visits and provides information” to the groups it hopes to recruit.

“We presented a pitch to the Teaneck Jewish Community Council and got some wonderful responses,” he said. “We’re also visiting Temple Emeth and Cong. Beth Sholom and will go to Orthodox shuls and yeshivas as well.”

So far, he said, 25 groups have said they’re interested, and five have already agreed to promote fair trade products.

While those he visits have been “very sympathetic” to the idea of fair trade, he said, “most are not aware of the movement. We bring them up to speed. Once they hear why this is such an important endeavor, they begin to understand that they can do something at the local level.”

During his visits, he said, “I form a picture of the division of labor in the developing world [explaining that] coffee, tea, wine, and flowers are sometimes produced under impossible conditions of exploitation and child labor abuses.”

Prince said he and Klein became interested in the issue at the same time. He recalled, however, that he had begun to learn something about the subject several years ago when he served as executive director of Temple Beth Or.

“The rabbi [then Peter Berg] was a social activist and began to buy fair trade coffee,” he said, noting that it helped bring the issue to his attention.

Prince spoke positively of Equal Exchange, which embraces the “hierarchy of needs” espoused by Maimonides. “Their approach is to empower the growers,” he said, “to help them become better farmers and lead better lives.”

The shop-owner — whose store boasts a kosher, fair trade coffee counter as well as a variety of other fair trade products — said he visited an Equal Exchange café in Boston to learn how best to brew its coffee.

The extent of the composting and recycling was “breathtaking,” he said. “We spent a full day and a half watching every process.”

He added that not only does he serve the coffee, but he gives educational materials about fair trade to customers. Last month, he sponsored a lecture on the subject, attracting about 30 attendees.

“People do care about it,” he said, adding that his goal is to carry as many fair trade products as possible.

“The Jewish tradition teaches us that when we buy and sell goods, we must treat our partners fairly and honestly,” said Ruth Messinger, AJWS president. “One product at a time, choosing fair trade is a step toward building a global system that treats all producers equitably and embodies the Torah’s vision of a just society.”

All Better Beans products are certified kosher by the Orthodox Union, the Kashruth Council of Canada, or Rabbi Abraham Hochwald, chief rabbi of the Northern Rhine-Germany. For more information, visit www.ajws.org/betterbeans.

Pakistan has been devastated by massive floods. Peter Biro/International Rescue Committee

Nearly a month after pictures of Pakistanis wading through floodwaters began to appear on the front pages of newspapers worldwide, aid from Americans, including Jews, is beginning to arrive in the stricken country.

American Jews are now responding to the call to bring relief to the devastated area, where conditions have been growing steadily worse. The monsoon rains that flooded Pakistan’s northwest region about a month ago have killed more than 1,000 people, and millions more are estimated to have been left homeless. Roads and railways have been damaged, along with schools and other civic infrastructure. The impact on the country’s crops is still being calculated and could run into the billions of dollars.

The American Jewish World Service and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee each put out an appeal for donations last week.

The AJWS, which has been working with grassroots organizations in Pakistan for years and had raised $42,000 for the Pakistan effort by the end of last week, is delivering aid bags with food, water, pots, pans, and clothes to families in the region. JDC also has worked with Pakistan before — it responded to earthquakes that hit the region in 2005 and 2008 — and the organization has allocated $20,000 from its revolving disaster relief fund that it plans to use to distribute medicine and other supplies. It hasn’t yet raised enough to cover that amount, but officials hope to meet or exceed the goal as their campaign progresses.

“Checks take time to come in,” said Will Recant, assistant executive vice president in charge of international development at JDC. “Not everything is done electronically, and a lot of what we do is done through federations.”

The American Jewish Committee contributed an undisclosed amount from its humanitarian fund to the JDC effort, and a spokesman for the group said it is encouraging donors to give to JDC directly.

In light of the dire situation, Pakistanis likely wouldn’t object to receiving aid from the United States, wrote Aoun Sahi, a journalist in Lahore, Pakistan, via e-mail. “But there will be some problems with the word ‘Jewish’ if printed on clothing especially,” he wrote. “It will not be easy for them to accept aid from Jewish groups from Israel, but they will be OK with American Jewish groups’ aid.”

He added, “I think this is a good opportunity for different Jewish groups to establish links with some Pakistani groups.”

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles said she knows of no aid that has gone from Israel to Pakistan during this crisis. Israel was widely applauded for its rapid response in providing aid and medical services in Haiti after the earthquake.

Though the Pakistani floods have been news for weeks, Jewish groups issued their call for donations only last week.

How much and how fast people donate can depend heavily on media coverage of a disaster.

“The biggest challenge right now is that this has been going on for two weeks, and the media is just now starting to pay attention,” AJWS spokesman Joshua Berkman said, adding that coverage of Pakistan’s floods has paled in comparison with the attention immediately given to the Haitian earthquake.

Larger, nonsectarian U.S. aid organizations are also reporting a slow response to the Pakistani flooding.

“Haiti is the obvious comparison. This response is far slower,” said Susan Kotcher, vice president for development at the International Rescue Committee. Kotcher said the IRC, which made its first calls to donors on July 29, is now getting hundreds of daily donations for Pakistan and has raised a total of $1.4 million from Americans. By contrast, in the first few days after the earthquake in Haiti, the group was getting thousands of donations each day, and raised more than $4 million in the first two weeks.

Some, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have attributed the slow response to the economic hardships facing Americans, as well as to a feeling of fatigue among donors who have contributed to other recent relief efforts. Others say the slow response may be caused by the fact that the devastation from floods, unlike that from earthquakes and tsunamis, develops over time.

“Its destructive power will accumulate and grow with time,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

But others suspect that political factors are at play. “I can’t help but have my suspicions,” said Edina Lekovic, communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “The first media coverage that I saw about the floods had more to do with whether the victims were going to rely on extremist groups for aid and relief,” she said, referring to news stories reporting that Islamic charities with connections to terrorist groups were distributing aid to people in flood-affected areas. “That their basic humanity and suffering comes second to questionable aid sources is insulting, and misses the point.”

The slowness of the global response is also being noticed in Pakistan. “Many right-wing organizations have been raising their voices over the slow response of Americans to the disaster,” Sahi said. “Many of them have been comparing the response of Americans to the Pakistani tragedy with the one faced by Haiti, and have been trying to make it a religious issue.”

Asked what might account for the slowness of the Jewish response, Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. said, “I don’t think that is an anti-Muslim deal. I think it’s a deeper question of overload” — too many issues to care about at once. American Jews are more concerned with existential threats being made against them by Iran, he suggested.

“If I’m scared that somebody is threatening me, I’m not going to listen to the cries of the neighbors,” Schulweis said. “That’s too bad,” he added, “because in the course of that parochialism, we lose one of the most uplifting values in Judaism itself, which is to be a light unto the nations.”

To help support the relief efforts in Pakistan, visit the websites of the JDC (jdc.org), the AJWS (ajws.org) or the IRC (theirc.org).

Los Angeles Jewish Journal

Englewood Councilwoman Charlotte Bennett Schoen says service has always been a part of her life.

“The idea of global justice is something you’re raised with,” Schoen told The Jewish Standard. It starts with what you learn in synagogue and Hebrew school and then “you get it — that [people] are much more alike than they are different.”

The councilwoman, who will complete her second term at the end of the year, will head to India on Jan.14 to volunteer with the American Jewish World Service.

Charlotte Bennett Schoen

AJWS, headed by Ruth Messinger, was created in 1985 as the first American Jewish organization dedicated to alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease among people across the globe. Its goal — according to its website, ajws.org — is “empowering people throughout the world to achieve justice and self-sufficiency through the promotion of human rights, education, economic development, healthcare, and sustainable agriculture.” This year marks the group’s 25th anniversary.

Schoen said a friend who has served multiple stints as an AJWS volunteer encouraged her to take the step.

“I’ve been thinking about it for years,” she said, pointing out that she couldn’t even consider it while she was on the council. Now, however, she simply has to make the appropriate arrangements with her business partner. The two own a property management company in Passaic Park.

Schoen said she will be happy with whatever she is asked to do in India. While she does not yet know her specific assignment, she thinks it will probably have something to do with children — she has a background in teaching — or with efforts to raise awareness about domestic violence. The councilwoman worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic violence in Bergen and Passaic counties.

“I can do many different things,” she said, noting that she also worked in medical management for 14 years, helping out with her husband’s family practice.

The Englewood resident has been to India four times.

“The first time I went with my daughter Ava, trekking in Tibet and Nepal,” she said. Later, after becoming close friends with a Paramus woman who grew up in India, she went back to the country several times for the friend’s family celebrations as well as additional travel.

“The hospitality is spectacular,” she said, adding that she went to synagogue in Cochin and Delhi, “where they spoke Hebrew and Hindi.”

Jews and Indians have much in common, she said, “particularly the focus on family and education.”

Schoen, Second Ward representative to the council since 2005 as well as 2007 council president, said it has been among her major goals to bring transparency and fiscal accountability to the city government. She has also tried to get people more involved in municipal government, ensuring through e-mails that residents know when meetings will take place.

During her first term on council she said, she worked to rescind a giveaway employee's’ lifetime health benefit, and as Council President, secured passage of the town’s pay-to-play reform ordinance, setting strict limits on contributions by contractors and professionals seeking to do business with the municipality.

She also spearheaded the town’s sustainability initiative, leading to the creation in 2009 of an Englewood “green team” to encourage conservation and step up recycling efforts.

Last week, she traveled to Atlantic City for a three-day New Jersey League of Municipalities conference, where Englewood received bronze Sustainable Jersey certification, “one of 65 New Jersey towns that qualified out of 566,” she said.

Schoen said she believes everyone “should step up to government and take a turn.” Women, she said, usually wait to be asked, “but I spend a lot of time telling them to put themselves forward to run. They have the ability to multi-task,” she said. “They know how to do it.”

Rabbi Robert Scheinberg learned many things from his recent trip to Ghana with the American Jewish World Service.

Most important, “The AJWS Young Rabbis Delegation made us confront directly the fact of global wealth imbalance in a way we often don’t,” said Scheinberg, religious leader of the United Synagogue of Hoboken. “I had known about it intellectually, but had not really experienced it with my heart and my eyes.”

The trip—which took place July 24-Aug. 5—brought 16 rabbis to Ghana to learn about global poverty while studying Jewish texts and engaging in a hands-on service project.

“I think one of AJWS’s goals in organizing this trip was to help the American Jewish community [understand] what it means to be a global citizen in Jewish terms, and to get issues of global citizenship on the Jewish agenda,” said Scheinberg. “I feel like those kinds of issues are now irreversibly on my own agenda.”

The Hudson County rabbi said he was impressed by the AJWS approach, “which is to be careful not to impose solutions from the outside, but to find and fund visionary leaders and help them have the resources they need to achieve their vision.”

Ruth Messinger, AJWS president, said grantees tackle problems from child slavery and human trafficking to environmental sustainability and food self-sufficiency. Mission participants work hand in hand with AJWS-supported organizations.

Rabbi Robert Scheinberg helped build a computer center for abused children in Ghana. Courtesy Rabbi Robert Scheinberg

In Ghana, volunteers worked with members of Challenging Heights (ChallengingHeights.org), which helps educate children who have been sold into slavery or forced into dangerous employment. Founded by James Kofi Annan, a survivor of child trafficking, the group is premised on the belief that education can transform the lives of abused and vulnerable children.

According to its website, the organization also supports at-risk and poor families “to ensure that children are protected from slavery and the worst forms of child labor through education.” It is estimated that 1.3 million children in Ghana are affected, “many of whom are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.”

Scheinberg’s group—consisting mostly of rabbis in their mid-30s to mid-40s—helped build a computer center.

“We stayed in a fishing village outside of Winneba, two hours from Accra,” said the rabbi. “In the morning, we worked on the construction site and interacted with the kids in school. While everyone is multi-lingual, English is Ghana’s only official language. Not everyone’s was good, but we were able to communicate.”

“It was wonderful for us to create bonds with people in the community—kids, teachers, construction workers,” he said. “It helped us realize that we need to build up those kinds of relationships. We didn’t just present a check, but rolled up our sleeves.”

Scheinberg noted that the primary problem in the village he visited is child slavery. “Families are desperate enough to sell their sons, justifying it to themselves by saying they’re apprenticing them to fishermen,” he said. “It starts at age 6.”

The current rate for a child laborer is $40 for a two-year contract. Fishermen seek small children as workers because they can fit more of them on their boats and because they need the children’s small fingers to untangle nets.

“It’s horribly dangerous work,” said Scheinberg. “There are many kids who drown.”

“The children are treated as property,” he said, pointing out that even children who survive or escape don’t have many options. Without Annan’s school, some would still be vulnerable.

Messinger said the rabbis’ mission included religious leaders from across the denominational spectrum. Following their daily work sessions, rabbis spent afternoons and evenings learning about social justice and global responsibility from Jewish texts and traditions.

Scheinberg said that one question the rabbis confronted during their study sessions was, “What are our circles of concern, and how do we balance our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our extended families, our community, the Jewish people, and the world as a whole?”

Even given participating rabbis’ differences in theology and approach to Jewish tradition, “We didn’t feel there was a difference among us in terms of the answer,” said Scheinberg, noting that all agreed outreach must extend beyond the borders of one’s own community.

Messinger said that AJWS provides the rabbis with follow-up materials for domestic programming when they return.

“Many have given sermons and divrei Torah about their experiences, written essays, and made donations to AJWS from their discretionary funds,” she said. “They tell us that the program has deepened their passion for global justice and that they are eager to share this passion with their communities.”

Scheinberg has already spoken to synagogue members about his trip, “and I know that this has just begun,” he said.

It is unlikely, however, that he will participate in such a trip again. “I think I can be most helpful being here and telling the story,” he said. “Any of the construction work done by the rabbis could have been done more easily by the Ghanaian workers. The real purpose of our being there was to have the experience and come back and tell the story—about Ghana and about how 80 percent of the world is living.”

“When people ask, I say it was terribly troubling to see it, but extremely inspiring to see how some of the problems that seem to be intractable can actually be addressed by visionary people and organizations,” said Scheinberg. “Slavery is such an important theme in the Jewish story. If there’s anyone Jews should feel a kinship with, it’s with people who have endured slavery and been liberated.”

Missions such as these enhance the image of Jews abroad, said Messinger. “It means we get to be seen as a people committed to social justice [while] respecting local people’s capacity to plan for themselves. Particularly when we take rabbis, we’re building a cadre of people who are leaders in the Jewish community and who will use their various pulpits, classrooms, etc., to engage Jews in global efforts.”

For more information about the American Jewish World Service, visit ajws.org.

In her first week on the job, Natalie Draisin poses with her office staff. Courtesy Natalie Draisin

When you step off a 15-hour plane ride and face the stark realization that you will be without running water, a flushing toilet, electricity, a refrigerator, a microwave, or air conditioning for the next five months, that is when you know you have stepped out of your comfort zone. When you realize that you are unexpectedly the only white person in the village in which you will be living, let alone the only Jew (my coworker thought we were extinct), that is when you know your comfort zone is worlds away.

This is how I spent much of the last half-year, and I loved it. You might think I am crazy, and I will not disagree with you. However, when you throw yourself into a culture half-a-world away from your own, forcing you to challenge your own beliefs, you live in constant fascination at how the world operates so smoothly — after you learn to shower properly with a bucket, milk a cow, slaughter a chicken, and cook over a wood-burning fire, that is.

The American Jewish World Service Organization (AJWS) Volunteer Corps placed me in a rural village about four-and-a-half miles outside of Kakamega, Kenya, a medium-sized town in the Western province. Volunteer Corps sends Jews (and non-Jews married to Jews) to volunteer for three to six months in a developing country, pairing them with nonprofit organizations in need of a volunteer with their skills. The purpose is to transfer sustainable skills, which can sometimes be more valuable than transient financial donations. This season, 11 volunteers ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s set out for Uganda and Kenya, all of them in urban settings.

All, that is, except for me, and that is the way I wanted it. AJWS gives you a choice of three placements, and I was the only volunteer who chose a rural one. I wanted to get a feel for international public health work at the grassroots level, not only working in the community, but also integrating myself into it. I wanted to understand why AIDS is sometimes believed to be a result of witchcraft; why people sometimes treat malaria with the boiled bark of a tree instead of a 50-cent medication; why people get teeth with cavities pulled for $2.50 instead of getting them filled; why women are forced to deliver babies on the side of the road; and why children are at home missing their education because it is impossible to come up with school fees of $80-$180 at the last minute.

I wanted to become a part of the community in which I volunteered. I did not realize, however, the extent to which I would be welcomed, protected, respected, feared, and revered just because of the color of my skin. It sometimes made me uncomfortable, but it also put me in a unique position to transfer skills to an organization.

The organization I worked with originally began in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, sending community health workers to the affected and infected. It later grew to respond to the disease more comprehensively, addressing interrelated issues such as gender-based violence, hunger, and the resulting need for women’s empowerment and financial security. The organization operates on donor funding and income-generating activities, but donor funding is not easy to obtain. In fact, some of the community health workers even had to be taught to read and write in order to fill out the necessary paperwork. The funding allows a salary of about $70 per month for each of the eight office staff, and the community health workers receive no salary, acting as volunteers.

‘Invaluable experience’

Working with a community-based organization with a network of over 1,000 community health workers who deliver care to over 1,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and 3,000 orphans and vulnerable children was an invaluable experience. I ran proposal writing workshops, taught computer classes, organized income generating activity trainings, wrote grants, created brochures for potential funders, and developed a five-year strategic plan and budget.

I refocused the organization’s work into four areas — gender-based violence, community health and development, women’s empowerment, and household nutrition and food security.

The need for the organization’s work became evident quickly by observing the issues people brought into the office. For example, community health workers, suffering from food insecurity (the unavailability of food), requested banana seeds to start a plantation to feed their families and the orphans they were raising.

A girl came in reporting rape, but a paralegal could not be assigned to her case because she could not afford the police report, medical check, and transportation fee to the hospital, about $20 total. Instead, she settled the case with the rapist for $20.

A four-year-old girl who was raped for months by her stepfather could not find any justice in a court system fraught with corruption. The judge refused to hear the case unless a birth certificate was submitted by the girl. A birth certificate, however, is something most Kenyans do not own because it is too expensive to give birth in a hospital, where they would be given a birth certificate upon delivery. The girl’s mother only exacerbated the situation by refusing to fight against her husband in support of her daughter. The little girl ended up in an orphanage.

Hopeless situations

Women are especially at risk for food insecurity, poverty, disease, and violence, even though they were recently granted rights in the new Constitution passed in 2010. Gender inequality is still shockingly ubiquitous. Women would come in during the day with open, gaping wounds from being beaten and raped by their AIDS-infected husbands, holding the hands of their malnourished children who were not in school because they could not afford the $1 exam fee. We would help them seek legal aid and health care, and they would usually seek refuge from their husbands by staying with their families for a while until things calmed down. Then, they would go back to the situation they came from, because they had nowhere to run and no money to support them. That is why the five-year strategic plan I created contains provisions for a women’s rescue center.

Like women in many other cases we handled, when their husbands die of AIDS, these women will be evicted from their land. Although women were recently granted the right to inherit land, that right has yet to be fully realized. Their husband’s brothers will inherit the women and their land, as well as the death sentence of AIDS. Then, the brother will spread the virus to his two other wives, and their newborn babies.

You might think this would be depressing, but the way in which people are able to overcome tragedy is quite inspiring. You will find these same women walking through the market with smiles on their faces, and if you show up at their doorsteps unannounced, tea and snacks will magically appear as if they have been waiting for you. If you stay a while, they will even try and fatten you up with what little means they have, to send you home as proof of food security. I am carrying around eight pounds of evidence.

Perfect example

My friend Jacob’s mother serves as a perfect example of this phenomenon. I almost never knew her, though; Jacob and I were almost never friends. I was terrified of him. He was homeless for three years, incarcerated for four months, and living in the same compound where I had been placed with three other Kenyan men in their 20s. The potential for horror stories mirroring my family’s worst fears about my trip to Kenya led me to avoid him and stay with my other friend’s family for his first week at the compound. I did not trust him or his friend who was also living with us, and had been homeless and in jail for a year. He perceived that I felt this way, and forgave me for it. I am embarrassed to admit that I had many preconceived notions about formerly homeless and incarcerated individuals.

What I did not understand was that in a country riddled with corruption, people are thrown in jail for unsubstantiated accusations if they cannot afford to bribe the police. Jacob was jailed for a crime he did not commit, because he chose to plead guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence (he was certain to be convicted). He was homeless because his alcoholic father could not afford his school fee, so he dropped out, walked 220 miles to Nairobi, and took a bus across the country in search of a job to support his sisters through school. He was at the top of his class, but had to stop at the equivalent of sophomore year of high school, and wanted to ensure that his sisters did not have to do the same.

Jacob was so poor, he licked pineapple rinds from the trash, ate food crawling with worms because it was better than no food at all, and sold his only pair of shoes to pay his sister’s school fees. Jacob is now trying to become a music artist, spreading the word of anti-corruption, and inspiring street children to let God help them get off the streets as He helped Jacob.

Rude awakening

Last summer, Jacob stumbled upon his mother’s HIV/AIDS medication. He had noticed that she had lost a lot of weight, but did not know why. He thought the weight loss was only a result of her diet — she could only afford a cup of porridge per day on her $60 per year salary, similar to that of 46 percent of Kenyans who make less than a dollar per day. She probably got the disease from her husband, who silently contracted HIV while disappearing with another woman for a while. He drank and beat her, as did her other son, who also gouged out his wife’s eye. She had returned late from the market one night after looking for food for dinner, and he drunkenly decided that an eye for tardiness was an appropriate punishment.

You might expect a woman in such a situation to commit suicide, start drinking, or go straight to a therapist, a rare occurrence in Kenya. Jacob’s mom did just the opposite; she carried on with life as usual, trying to earn a little money to feed her three children and one grandson who live with her. Unfortunately, these circumstances are all too often normal, and representative of the population served by the organization for which I was working. She welcomed me with the biggest smile she could muster and a meal worth most of whatever savings she had. As her visitor, I was a blessing, she said, before sending me off with gifts for my mother and an open invitation to come back unannounced — her house was mine, too.

Jacob and his mother’s situation is representative of countless others in Africa. ‘Sadly’ is a subjective term, however; Jacob and his family do not feel sorry for themselves, and they do not appear to be struggling. Like many Kenyans, they will literally give you the shirt off their backs, make you feel at home, and never ask you for anything. They do not see problems in life, just challenges, and despite all of them, they are happy and making the most of what they have in life. As Jacob said to me one day, “In Kenya, even when you’re crying, you’re laughing.

Another kind of wealth

If people got upset about everything there was to get upset about, they would never be happy — so instead, they laugh. As a result, many people are financially poor, but rich in happiness. They remind us that financial wealth is not always directly correlated with spiritual wealth.

I believe I walked away from this experience leaving my judgments behind. Jacob’s lack of education, money, and consequent lack of opportunity did not mean he was any less intelligent than I, or less capable. It meant that the environment in which he lived did not allow him to realize his potential, imposing restrictions that I was blessed never to have known. Although this may sound like an obvious realization, it is not an easy one to reach when you are the only white person in town, sharing walls with a person who was formerly in jail and living on the streets, while putting up more walls of your own. Similarly, it is not an easy one to reach while sitting in your comfortable home in one of the wealthiest areas of America.

Why I was born in a comfortable, happy, loving environment rife with opportunity instead of a situation such as Jacob’s or his mother’s has always dumbfounded me, and continues to do so. Jacob was born at his grandfather’s funeral, as his mother buried her father. Dirt was shoveled over the grave while Jacob came to life right next to it. My very opposite, fortunate situation makes me feel not only unbelievably lucky, but also obligated to work with those who were not born in such surroundings. I believe that understanding how much environment affects our lives is essential when it comes to social justice. We must realize that the opportunities we have been given are blessings, and that it is our duty as Jews to step out of our comfort zones and work towards achieving social justice, because we can.

When I stood at the Natzweiler-Struthoff Concentration Camp in France last August right before I left for Kenya, that was the thought that affirmed my decision to volunteer with American Jewish World Service. This is the camp where 86 Jews were gassed to make a “members of an extinct race” exhibit. These prisoners were only there because of their environment. Like impoverished people suffering from HIV/AIDS, facing evictions and beatings from their family members, or lacking money to send their children to school, their circumstances were a direct result of the world around them — not the kind of people they were. Had they been in different situations, they could have thrived.

A Jewish ‘mission’

Jews and Africans alike have a long history of overcoming social persecution, and as the Jews who escaped it, it is our responsibility to fight persecution and injustice wherever and whenever we have the chance. We cannot see ours as a responsibility to stop only anti-Semitism — for ethnic persecution, poverty, or any factor which restricts the opportunities afforded to an individual all fall under the umbrella of social injustice.

I knew that as much as I could offer to the community, I would be taking more from them than I could ever give. I think that I came back a different, better person, and I hope that in the future, that I will be more cognizant of the little judgments I sometimes unknowingly make when I fail to recognize that a person’s current situation is merely a product of each opportunity they were blessed with or denied along the way.

I will try my best to emulate the unparalleled Kenyan hospitality, and most of all, I will be more grateful for everything I have in life, from a solid education and family that has never known violence, to a refrigerator filled with food and a flushing toilet.

Volunteering in a third world country with other Jews striving to advance social justice will hopefully change the lives of those you are there to help, but inevitably, it will change yours for the better, as well.

Former Jewish Standard intern Natalie Draisin is currently working as a consultant in Washington, D.C. She graduated from The Johns Hopkins University and majored in public health, combining her interest in health, development, and policy. American Jewish World Service allowed her to combine her education with her previous experience in health policy.