Amy Adina Schulman Memorial Fund

124 Snowden Lane

Princeton , NJ 08540-3918

22^nd Annual Report  -  Sept. 2009 – Tishrei 5770

www.AmyAdinaSchulmanFund.org

Dear Friends,

        We are pleased to once again send you our Annual Report and to note this was a year of tremendous growth as the Fund supported a record number of 48 grantees. 

Your continuing contributions help these amazing young leaders forge compassionate, just, and healthier societies in Israel , Africa, Latin America , and former Soviet states.   Excerpts from a sample of their diverse and essential work are highlighted below and continue on the following pages.              

Lili B., a recent graduate of Brown U. , was an unpaid intern with ACRI, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel .   “I’m not an Israeli; I don’t know what it’s like to grow up fearing war and suicide bombs and rockets shattering my window in the night,  or knowing at the age of 18 I will be in the military…  And I’m not a Palestinian; I can’t claim to be stateless, or possibly understand what it’s like to fear soldiers searching my house, or think about living under occupation every day…  But being a Jewish-American, I feel a sense of responsibility…  (pg .2)

Eliot B., a resident of Highland Park , IL and a graduate of Rutgers U. , worked with Physicians for Human Rights in Ethiopia , helping to develop a nationwide de-worming project. (pg. 3)

Missy L’s work with children in Beersheva was deferred temporarily by the war in Gaza (pg. 4)

        The Fund continues to be unique in awarding funds directly to individuals who work in progressive social action projects of their choice, a piece of the world they  choose to repair, with the additional commitment to educate and encourage peers to participate in similar activities.   $370,000 has been awarded to date via your tax deductible contributions;  all administrative costs are covered by our family.  Please continue to nourish the seeds of hope these grantees sow;  you do make an impact.          

              Health and strength in this new year, and much gratitude,

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

Excerpts from Grantee Notes  

LILI B. wrote, “…But being a Jewish American I feel a sense of responsibility to this place and to the people who live here, because, like it or not, I am linked to it by my identity…  But what I see …this wall, that rubble, this inequality… I’m questioning the narratives I learned, because maybe to love something is to criticize it, to bring it into a better form of itself.”   As an unpaid intern for ACRI,  Lili contributed to website development, writing newsletter articles, field research, a report on corporate social responsibility, codes of conduct and labor rights. 

 “….There were many times in these months I tried to stop my brain; and there were times when I jumped head first into what has totally preoccupied me while I’ve been here:  the occupation…   ACRI’s Report on the State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories has been officially published in English, edited (in part) and stuffed in envelopes (in whole) by yours truly.  I am not an expert or political analyst, so please, do research for yourself and learn about this conflict!”

AUDREY R received an MA in School Counseling from Boston U. , and now volunteers as the Project Manager for the FORGE Education Fund, a U.S. based nonprofit that “works in Zambia with a mission to ‘build upon the capacity of African refugees to cultivate empowered communities, to create conditions or peace and prosperity in their countries.’    It provides the structure and means for exceptional refugee students to obtain a university degree and outfit themselves with the qualifications necessary for refugees to find a job upon their return to their home countries.  Resettlement is one durable solution, but I want to continue teaching and learning with refugees who will be repatriated.”

“I plan to use this grant to transform un-utilized space into a study room and library by having a table and chairs built and purchasing power strips, rechargeable lamps for our frequent power outages, and reference books.”

The Executive Director of FORGE writes that Audrey “has taken her position to an entirely unexpected level of impact, having developed a specially-targeted curriculum to help these students articulate their vision, determine their goals and act on their values.”  This position was to last from July 2008 to August 2009, but she has extended her work until Feb. 2010.  Upon her return Audrey plans to give presentations to groups including the AAUW and to her Temple Beth El community in her hometown of Huntington Station , NY .

GIDON BROMBERG, Founder and Israeli Director of Friends of the Earth – Middle East (FoE-ME) and a Time Magazine “2008 Hero of the Environment,” was the speaker at the 2008 Annual Amy Adina Memorial Fund Lecture at the Jewish Center of Princeton.  His work in developing cross border community programs among Israel , Jordan , and the Palestinian Territory is described as a model for peace and environmental programs in conflict areas.    Access FoE-ME’s monthly newsletter,  “Environmental Peacemaking” at www.foeme.org                                                                                           

ROBIN R., a graduate of Yale Law School , the U. of the South in Sewanne , TN , and Oxford University spent months volunteering with FoE-ME’s “Jordan River Peace Parks project, investigating the legal criteria for establishing Transboundary Protected Areas.”   

ELIOT B. detailed the steps in the Ethiopian de-worming project: “including patient enrollment forms, databases to store the information properly, patient tracer forms so they [patients] could be located for checkups, data bases for drug distribution.  We educated outreach workers on how to avoid infection, made a power point and a little cartoon handbook for workers and clients about local worms, and questionnaires to be given at different stages of the project to test client knowledge and see how effective our methods are…      The Schulman Fund helped me greatly on this trip.  Thank you so much for the grant..”

TALIA K., a Vassar BA in Health and Community, with background as an Emergency Room Patient Care Liaison in Poughkeepsie , NY , and a Planned Parenthood medical assistant in Oakland , CA , participated on a medical mission with Prevention International in El Salvador and Nicaragua , providing information on HPV, a genital virus, and cervical cancer, screening, and treatment to women in these developing countries who are without access to gynecological care.  Upon her return she wrote

 “The cervical cancer screening and treatment program was extremely successful.  We saw hundreds of women and trained dozens of Salvadorian doctors and nurses.  Thank you for the grant which enabled me to participate."

DAVID L. of Delray Beach , FL , a second career rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College travelled to Russia and former Soviet Union states to lead Passover Seders and to teach.   Upon his return, he wrote to us, “Their cultures and their experiences must shape the way they express their Judaism if it is to successfully become a part of their lives.  We can teach and guide, but we must step back and let them develop something that resonates with them.  But our being there lets them know they are not alone, provides important encouragement as they struggle to reconnect  [to Judaism] in a land that is not quick to embrace this reconnection.  My ability as a rabbinical student makes a powerful statement that we are in this together, but that the local community is important as  a way of life in that place, their home; you can live a Jewish life of meaning and value where you are.”

JOANNA Z-B interned at a public defenders’ office in the South Bronx in her senior year at Columbia U. “where I learned to navigate the legal system on behalf of a low income, mainly Latino Community.”  In Spring 2009 she interned at the NY Immigration Coalition.   This summer of 2009, she was selected by the American Jewish Committee to assist the “AJC staff on religious and  ethnic  tolerance,  to reach out to African-American, Latino, and Asian communities in NYC, to build connections between Jews and other minority groups…  “I became convinced that in order to better understand and advocate for Latin immigrants .  I had to live and do service work in a Latin American country.”  

 Joanna’s grant from the Amy Adina Fund, added to that of Princeton in Latin America (PILA), will enable her to spend “10 months at the Mexican Institute for Family and Population Research “developing public health programs for impoverished and marginalized communities, empowering women and young people.”

MELISSA (Missy) L. wrote in her application,  “Education is my passion. I was an Urban Education Minor in college and spent much time in West Philadelphia public schools: student teaching, tutoring, staffing after school programs and developing new community-school partnerships…  

“I have seen the savage inequalities of the public education system and worked in programs that give the community the tools to lessen these gaps.”

“My project involves volunteering at an after-school academic enrichment program for Ethiopian-Israelis, as part of a national program called Atidim (‘Futures’) that aims to reduce educational disparities between the center and periphery of the nation.  It also includes an internship at the Neta Erez school in BeerSheva where I will assist the English specialist.  I will have site visits to a gan [kindergarten] dedicated to the special needs of young children with autism, and to see a Bedouin Arab school."

But Missy’s plans were deferred by the Gaza War.

“Many schools in the southern region are closed until a ceasefire.  I volunteer in a one-room school that typically serves children who are in the [Soroka] Hospital for an extended time, but now is open to children of nurses and doctors who need childcare while the city’s schools are closed.  We do art projects, storybook theatre, music activities.  The hallway is considered a secure location and the hospital’s ‘tzeza adom’ [warning system that a rocket is coming in 15 seconds] is less jarring than the city’s air raid siren…"

“I pray this conflict will end soon, that there will be a brighter reality for the children of the region.  I look forward to starting at the Neta Erez school when it reopens, and hope that there will be a meaningful and lasting peace soon…      Take care, Missy”

TATYANA M.  grew up in the former Soviet Union . “I learned about human rights violations first hand.  As Jews we were persecuted in all areas of life.  In 1994 my family escaped to the U. S. …  I learned about sweatshops in the Global South and the women who were exploited in order to generate profit for garment manufacturers, forced to take birth control pills to prevent pregnancies in the fear of lost productivity.

I co-founded the George Washington Univ. Students against Sweatshops, went to ( U. of Pittsburg ) law school to become a legal advocate for women... 

“ I spent my second year at Nottingham School of Law in England to expand my knowledge of repro-ductive rights issues internationally, and issues such as trafficking in women, responses to domestic violence… 

“Justice Yoram Danziger, the newest judge on the Israeli high court, comes from private practice in    commercial litigation.   He has need for a law clerk with expertise in human rights and offered the position to me to assist him in conducting comparative legal research, focusing on human and women’s rights.”

SHAINA W.  deferred admission to the U. of Pennsylvania ’s School of Social Policy and Practice to volunteer for 10 months with OTZMA,  providing direct community service in a development town, and dealing with refugee services and rights for newer Israelis and for asylum seekers from diverse countries.

“I would like to thank the Amy Adina Schulman Memorial Fund for its courageous effort to support  young activists and leaders. It is with your help that many of us can take aggressive steps towards social change when we are young.    Thank you for providing me with a grant.”