SAN DIEGO (Press Release)– Thirteen teens from throughout San Diego County participated in this year’s Philanthropy Leadership in Training, in partnership with the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, which culminated in three significant grant awards to Jewish Family Service, Second Chance and ARTS – A Reason to Survive. Twelve years ago, the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego created an innovative new program to educate high-school students about philanthropy and the non-profit sector first-hand. Teens spend a week of their summer vacation touring local non-profits to learn about organizations’ core missions, organizational structures and governance.
“This was a very enriching and eye-opening experience for me,” said Jake Mandel, a student from High Tech High School, who handed a check to Second Chance Executive Director Robert Coleman. “This has been life-changing for me. I am so impressed by the work of all of the organizations we visited, but the work of Second Chance, Jewish Family Service and ARTS – A Reason to Survive really stood out for us.”
The students toured ten sites throughout the five-day program including the Challenged Athletes Foundation; Helen Woodward Animal Center; Seacrest Retirement Community; Interfaith Community Services; The Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center; La Jolla Playhouse; Jewish Family Service’s Hand Up Youth Food Pantry and Girls Give Back programs; ARTS – A Reason to Survive, The New Children’s Museum and Second Chance. On the last day of the program, students convened to discuss where to distribute the funds which the Jewish Community Foundation and the teens themselves allotted to grant to the organizations of their choice.
“It was not an easy decision,” said Ellen Horowitz, a student at the San Diego Jewish Academy, who handed a check to the two staff representatives from Jewish Family Service. “All of the organizations we visited do amazing work. The reason we chose the three we did was because we felt they served a diverse population and met a serious need in the community.”
The first grant award went to Jewish Family Service (JFS). The students had toured JFS’s Hand Up Youth Food Pantry and were briefed on the Girls Give Back program. Hand Up Youth Food Pantry provides food to thousands of San Diego’s hungry, at distribution sites throughout the county. In the past year, Hand Up has provided 9,070 people with 33,177 food bags totaling more than 208,322 pounds of food to hungry people. The Girls Give Back program promotes Jewish values while developing critical thinking, healthy self-esteem, and empathy in high school girls.
The second grant award went to Second Chance, a program that provides work readiness training and job placement services, supportive housing, mental health, and financial literacy services to those confronting severe barriers to employment (i.e., former substance abusers, ex-offenders, homeless veterans and at-risk youth).
The third grant award went to ARTS – A Reason to Survive, an organization that works with children and youth ages 3-22 who are experiencing some of life’s most difficult situations: homelessness, domestic violence, terminal or chronic illness, foster care, severe physical, mental, emotional and behavioral challenges. The program uses arts as a way to therapeutically assist the children going through life-changing challenges.
*
Preceding provided by the Jewish Community Foundation