MONTREAL — Canadian Hadassah-WIZO, Montreal Centre, (CHW) has launched its 2009 campaign to raise funds for projects in Israel that support children, women and health care. The theme is Lishmor Al Ha’bayit (Safeguarding Our Home).
The kick-off was a major donors breakfast held this week at the home of Sarah Hutman, and addressed by new CHW national president Marla Dan of Toronto.
There is a sadness hovering over the campaign this year due to the death in March of CHW national president Terry Schwarzfeld following injuries she sustained after being assaulted while on vacation in Barbados the month before.
Montreal CHW president Susan Abramowitz hopes her tragic passing will encourage members and others to donate in her memory or get more actively involved in the organization’s work.
“As a tribute to her passion, I am calling upon you to pay tribute to her by doing something you hadn’t planned on this year: join a committee, help launch an event, increase your annual campaign gift,” she said in a message to members.
“Terry was a woman of vision,” added campaign chair Maxine Sanders. “In her short time as president from November until February she was coming up with all kinds of plans. We would like to put Terry’s vision to work.”
This annual general campaign replaces the Youth Aliyah appeal, which historically was the primary source of income for CHW in Montreal.
The new structure also more accurately reflects the diversity of the projects CHW supports in Israel.
Last year’s campaign netted over $120,000.
Reinvigorating the membership is as important a part of the campaign, as raising money, said Sanders.
Today, CHW has about 1,500 members in Montreal. Many have been with the organization for decades.
The organization would like to have more members like Abramowitz, a mother of two school-aged children, who has a career – as a consultant to some major Canadian fundraising campaigns.
She joined CHW 16 years ago, after living for several months in Israel. “I came back looking to raise money for Israel. One night I was out for the birthday of one of my husband’s friends. His wife, Alana Shiveck, said, ‘Why don’t you join Hadassah?’ I said, ‘What is that?’ I had never heard of it before.”
Shiveck is still a key volunteer in the campaign.
Abramowitz joined the Shoshanim chapter for young women, and has risen through the ranks since then.
She visited some of the CHW-sponsored projects in Israel at the end of 2008, including daycare centres, hospitals and schools. The highlight for her was the Netanya Technical High School, a last resort for kids who can’t learn in a traditional school setting.
The 400 teens who attend this school have exhausted all other options; there are no other schools willing to accept them. Without a high school education, they won’t be accepted into the army, and having no military service diminishes their chances of finding a good job.
At the Netanya school, they can take hairdressing, carpentry, hotel management, mechanics, metallurgy, diamond-cutting or a computer programming course overseen by the giant firm Cisco Systems Inc. CHW also makes it possible for a certain number of students to participate in the March of the Living, alongside teens from the Diaspora.
Although the economic downturn is making canvassing more of a challenge this year, Sanders is confident people will respond because the funds are going for direct, essential services to people in need in Israel at a time when the country continues to struggle with maintaining its security and social expenditures.
“People are hearing about how much people are hurting and want to help. Even if they are hurting themselves, they know others are in a worse situtation,” she said.
For information on the campaign, call 933-8461.
Compiled by CJN Staff