YAD Makes an Impact on the World at Large

Did you know….

• Ten percent of Jews in the Bay Area live below the poverty line.
• More than 10,000 Jewish elderly in the Bay Area need home health care, assisted living or residential services, and one-third rely on a Jewish organization to provide it.
• One in every eight children has a disability or learning difference.
• The Jewish Community Federation funds a full range of social services including vocational training; assisting seniors, children with special needs and victims of domestic violence; and more.
• The Jewish Federation was one of the first responders to Hurricane Katrina and the natural disasters in Burma and China.
• The Federation focuses on addressing humanitarian emergencies, Jewish and non-Jewish throughout the world.
• YAD, the Young Adults Division of the Federation, raised more than $250,000 toward these programs last year.

If this is news to you, it wouldn’t surprise me. San Francisco’s YAD is known for its fabulous events and well subscribed leadership programs so sometimes the core mission of the parent organization, the Jewish Community Federation, gets lost in the shuffle. It certainly did for me. Even as a member of the YAD Board last year, the Federation was a bit of an enigma. It wasn’t until I attended the national conference Washington 15 in the spring that I really understood the immensity of work the Federation does and the tremendous impact it has on our community -- in San Francisco, nationally, in Israel and around the world. Why go with this umbrella approach to tzedakah? Why not give to each organization directly and pick and choose? The short answer is that it would be impossible for any one of us to have the time or bandwidth to learn about all of the organizations needed to take care of the community as a whole. The Federation has teams of volunteers and staff who carefully pour through all of the information to optimize impact. So what does this mean for YAD? Well, we still want to throw great parties, but we also want to give you the opportunity to have an impact on the world at large. To that end, the campaign team is working hard to create greater visibility of where the Federation funds go and the difference that they make. Basically connecting giving to mission. That $18 you give to Federation instead of a bento box lunch can change the world. Literally.

• $7 pays for a college student to partake in a Shabbat dinner at a Hillel.
• $20 pays for a one-time resume-writing workshop for an unemployed Bay Area professional.
• $32 pays for a kosher Passover seder meal and service for a senior citizen.
• $80 pays for an emergency-call pendant enabling a senior to maintain independence while living at Menorah Park.
• $200 pays for 25 new books for a Jewish library in the Former Soviet Union.
• $365 pays for one month of pre-school for an at-risk Ethiopian-Israeli child.
• $5,000 pays for a teen to visit Israel.
• $15,435 pays for a child to attend a Jewish pre-school full-time at a JCC for a year.

So stay tuned for programming and information, and let us know what we can do to make the campaign more meaningful for you. You can reach me at [ sygoldstein AT yahoo DOT com]

Oh, and if you haven't made your donation to Federation yet this year, please click here to do so. As Jews, if we don’t take care of our own, who will?

Sharon Goldstein, Co-Vice President of Campaign, Young Adults Division Board