|
|
Oct. 7, 2005
Help for hungry Jews
Anti-poverty group hosts a day workshop.
PAT JOHNSON
When she was a child, one of the guests at Iris Toledano's bat
mitzvah pulled her away from the crowd and requested that she not
open the gift she had brought in front of the other children. The
girl was ashamed of the present she was able to afford for the special
occasion.
"I've never forgotten that," Toledano says now. As the
co-ordinator of Yad b'Yad: The Council on Poverty, Toledano is sensitive
to the shame and stigma that can accompany need. Alleviating that
stigma and the need that spawns it is the core objective of her
organization.
It's been five years since the first major Jewish community forum
placed poverty squarely in the centre of the Jewish community's
agenda and launched the formal structure that has become Yad b'Yad.
Much has changed in the ensuing years and a range of ameliorative
programs are now in place to assist Jews living in poverty.
One example of a new project is a food bank-format provider of diapers,
baby formula and food for parents with children four and younger.
Jointly conceived by the Jewish Family Service Agency and Yad b'Yad,
the program is being run out of Or Shalom Synagogue in Vancouver
and Beth Tikvah Synagogue in Richmond.
A further step will take place next month, when community leaders
are invited to a working session Toledano says will equip participants
with the tools and skills to address poverty when they confront
it.
"It's really easy to forget about the hardship faced by poor
people in our society," said Toledano. "We want to make
an impact on the work within the organizations."
Bringing together the leaders, lay people and staff of the many
Jewish communal organizations is intended to inculcate sensitivity
to poverty issues across agencies – even those that do not
deal directly with social services.
"They have influence in their organizations, so we're hopeful
this strategy will help to ensure that action is taken in these
organizations," said Toledano.
Some of the programs that are already in place address poverty directly.
For example, Tickets to Inclusion is a program, operated out of
the Jewish Family Service Agency and Shalom B.C., which offers free
or reduced-price tickets to community events for people who would
not otherwise be able to attend. Share Our Treasure offers a similar
approach to High Holiday services.
But Toledano and her agency want to make every person in a position
of community leadership sensitive to the limitations of insufficient
financial resources.
"There's this pressure all the time to have money to participate
in this community," she said. Even relatively small expenses
add up and can be insurmountable to a family living on the edge
of a financial precipice. A hot school lunch that costs a couple
of dollars can be a painful experience to young people from limited
income families.
"He can only smell the hot dogs in the hallway," said
Toledano.
The day-long conference, which takes place Nov. 6 at the Peretz
Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, is aimed at a primarily invited
audience of community professionals and leaders. It will feature
some of British Columbia's top social service, advocacy and educational
minds as well as a major address by Michael Goldberg, the researcher
whose statistical study five years ago provided the foundation for
the ongoing work of the poverty council. Goldberg, research director
of SPARC, the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C., will
speak on the topic, Addressing Poverty in the Realm of Current Social
Policy.
There will also be workshops on issues that include stereotyping
of the poor and poverty's specific impacts on areas such as education,
child care, seniors and recreation.
In her invitation to community leaders, Shelley Rivkin, Yad b'Yad's
chair, said the focus of this year's event is on creating strategies
for change "We want to create opportunities for those organizations
and programs that have reached out to those on fixed and limited
income or have introduced new programs to address such needs to
share information and approaches," wrote Rivkin. "We want
to hear what has worked and what still needs to be done."
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
^TOP
|
|
