21^st Annual Report    September 2008    Tishrei 5769   Page 1/4

Dear Friends,  

“I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world, but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope.  Especially young people, in whom the future rests.”                                                                                 Historian and social activist Howard Zinn

Thanks to your ongoing generosity the Amy Adina Fund has awarded almost one-third of a million dollars, $328,300 to hundreds of young people since Amy Adina’s death.  Thousands of lives have been touched through our grantees’ projects.  As always, your financial and moral support remain essential to the Fund’s continued growth.   All contributions go directly to the endowment base; the Schulman Family covers all administrative costs.   Gifts, including life cycle events, are fully tax deductible.

Grantees are required to submit a plan to build community, to educate and encourage their peers to become similarly involved in social justice action.  This year two previous grantees, whose progressive activism continues, each sent a letter of recommendation for new applicants.  Optimism and possibilities increase exponentially.

Please take a few minutes to read with pride the dreams and accomplishments of  8 of this year’s 41 grantees whose reports are briefly excerpted on the next pages.  Let us know if you’d like to learn more about these or other grantees.  Finally, our annual speaker was Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize, described as the “father of constitutional law in Israel ,” who spoke on The Crisis in Israel ’s Legal System.

A  year  of  blessing,  health,  and  shalom.

 Dan, Jennie, Molly, Jake              Joel, Nancy, Logan                       Ruth and Mel z”l of blessed memory

Page 2 - A brief sampling of current grantees reports

Serendipity is exhilarating:  Three grantees with very different backgrounds, each pursuing a different way to improve healthcare for Negev communities.

 Marianne Nellis  served as a volunteer pediatrician on the in-patient staff at Soroka Hospital in Be’ersheva.  “From my initiation in medical school in inner city Baltimore where I volunteered at the local clinic through my residency where I predominantly cared for children of all ethnicities receiving Medicaid in NYC, I sought to serve an under-served population.  I was attracted to volunteer my services at Soroka because half the children served are from the Bedouin Arab population; many suffer from conditions generally found in developing countries...”

Paul Schramm III used a Global Positioning System(GPS) and a Geographic Information System(GIS ) will develop a geographical proximity analysis to “examine risk based on distance from environmental hazards among Bedouin and Jewish communities living in the Negev Desert .    This is the first time that environmental hazards in the region are being geospatially mapped and related to health of the local people.   Proximity to factories, illegal dumping sites, hazardous waste facilities including Ramat Hovav , Israel ’s toxic petro-chemical waste complex,… will be considered.”   He also planned to use availability and accessibility of medical data from local clinics and Soroka Hospital .  Paul has a BA in Chemistry, an MS in Geological Sciences, and is a student in Emory U’s MPH program in Global Environmental Health.  His research is supervised through Israel ’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

Note:  When we received Paul’s application, we e-mailed Marianne hoping to promote synergy with Paul’s work.  Marianne replied, “I am very happy to help as much as I can.  As the daughter of an environmentalist, I am very concerned about the effects of Ramat Hovav.  Thank you for thinking of me…  A joyous Pesach.”

Finally, Dina Grossman of Princeton , NJ ,  and a student at Yale, worked with Physicians for Human Rights.  “Bedouin in unrecognized villages do not receive the basic healthcare infrastructure and services that an Israeli town does…  My project will be to research what other countries do with individuals in remote locations or belonging to an ethnic minority… I hope to find an international standard, a benchmark; then, given resource constraints, to make policy recommendations to enhance the current system or build a new model of healthcare provision...”

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Excerpts from additional AASMFund Grantees   

David Cobey, a Cincinnati resident who majored in Economics at Princeton,  spent last year in Guatemala with FUNDESCRI, a Guatemalan charity that “works to better the livelihood of rural indigenous peoples… its mission includes post-conflict reconstruction, sustainable development, and malnutrition alleviation…  Last September FUNDESCRI taught David “…basic planting and irrigation techniques...composting and fertilizing, improved furnaces, wells, and, yes, latrines.”   

       In January 2008: “I’m off to Nebaj in the area most affected by the civil war.  When you read about the Guatemalan Genocide, mass murders and forced relocation, this is the area where the violence was most concentrated.  I’m excited, though of course a little scared…”

        David reported in Spring 2008, “The center in Nebaj, where I am working, recently had a huge advance. We managed to get certified by Guatemala as a production facility that is sanitary.  This will allow us to open up new markets for products we process, get higher prices for these products and hopefully pass these gains onto the farmers we work with.”

   Although 50% of the nation lives in poverty, 40% can’t read, and “the affects of the war are incredibly pervasive, he is hopeful that “teaching poor farmers how to farm, build irrigation systems and compost piles is teaching them how to become small capitalist farmers.  Instead of day laborers, they become small business owners, investing in their future.”

Two previous grantees, who continue to pursue justice in their current work, each wrote to support a new grantee:   Hannah Weitzer recommended Rachael Levy of Carmel, NY for an internship with Windows - Channels for Communication, an Israeli-based organization that conducts educational seminars in schools, and brings together Jewish and Palestinian Israeli youth and Palestinian youth from the West Bank to work in media and art,  “alternative, non-violent means to deal with psychological barriers.”

Emily Schaeffer wrote in support of Sophie Bloch, of Eugene , OR .

Sophie is a volunteer with Active Vision, an organization that “works with destitute African refugees who arrive in Israel after suffering extensive trauma and deprivation in their native countries, and walking thru the desert subjected to persecution by the Egyptian military.   Active Vision seeks to enlighten the public both in Israel and internationally about the refugee situation…”

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Rachel Bergstein, a U. of Maryland student, was an unpaid intern with Friends of the Earth-Middle East, an organization that has brought together 17 cross-border Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian communities mutually dependent on shared water,  to promote co-operative efforts to protect their environment, and to advance sustainable regional development.   Rachel worked in two policy areas:  the Israeli/Palestinian Pro-Aquifer Project to decrease the pollution of a shared Mountain Aquifer; secondly, developing “the new Climate Policy Project, a how-to guide for the Israeli Knesset members who are environmental policy makers, on how to create effective and successful climate policy.”

  A snippet from Rachel’s blog vividly describes her nuanced understandings:

      “Mayim Mayim Mayim Hey! [Water Water Water Hey!]   Israel is having the worst water crisis it has seen in decades.  Lake Kinneret , a crucially important freshwater source for Israel (one reason why politics surrounding negotiations with Syria over the Golan are so contentious),

is at its lowest level since the government began recording in 1964.  The Kinneret will likely pass below the black line in the next weeks.”

       With humor and real concern she notes, “On average, Palestinians consume 1/2 the quantity of water the World Health Organization recom-mends as a minimum for basic health and sanitation.  With the regional water crisis as bad as it is (it’s a land-area the size of my pupik  [belly-button]),  any environmental problem that affects Israel affects Palestine .”

Dana Gottfried grew up in South Carolina , went to college in NYC, and worked as a counselor and then Program Director at the 92^nd  St. Y’s camp for children with behavioral disorders and developmental disabilities. 

    She spent this past year learning Hebrew at an Ulpan, and then volunteer-ing in the  Home for Adults with Special Needs,  located on Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha.   In Nov. 2007 she wrote, “I love it here in Israel !!!  I am on a kibbutz near Gaza .  The kibbutz and its people are wonderful.”

    In January Dana wrote in anguish, “…there was a terrible tragedy on my kibbutz.  A fellow volunteer was killed by a sniper while working in the fields near Gaza .  His name was Carlos.  He was from Ecuador .   He was my boyfriend…”    Dana struggles but continues on.

May this be a year of remembrance and reaffirmation of life,

modestly attempting to repair our world through active, collective responsibility for each other.