Food for Passover

Passover can be a very expensive holiday, especially for single mothers with a large family to feed. That’s why Met Council’s Family Violence Services, a program for victims of domestic violence, distributed over 140 food packages to our women and children clients to help cut expenses during the holidays.

Our hard-working volunteers unpacked and handed out over three tons of food, helped the women carry the bags – laden with matzah, grape juice, apple juice, tomato sauce, tuna, oil, chicken – and cleaned up the facility, all the while treating our clients with a great deal of dignity and respect. Thanks to their diligent efforts, Met Council was able to assist over 900 women and children this Passover holiday.

Shana Frydman, the director of Family Violence Services, praised the effectiveness and value of our volunteers. “The program ran smoothly, the clients were treated with incredible respect, and the volunteers were both thoughtful and truly helpful,” said Frydman.

The dignity of our volunteers was also noted by Yehudis Robinson, the director of Sister to Sister whose family clients were also served on Sunday. “Volunteers,” she said, “helped run a most efficient, professional yet warm distribution yesterday. Everything ran so smoothly and beautifully and we were able to help so many families go into the holidays with true happiness and a sense of self worth.”

Volunteering Made Easy

Volunteer Match is now available on IPhone.

Volunteer Match, a San Francisco-based organization, has connected millions of prospective volunteers with not-for-profit organizations. With the additional convenience of an iPhone application, the numbers may grow even larger.

Now, all you have to do is enter your zip code on your iPhone and, voila! You have thousands of volunteer opportunities listed at your fingertips. The application even allows you to save or post volunteer activities on Facebook and Twitter! With volunteering made this easy, how can you resist?

*Career Opportunity*

Met Council's Growth Fund initiative engages grassroots organizations to build their capacity to better serve their clients by providing technical assistance, trainings and funding. The Growth Fund is seeking an experienced grant writer to help small grassroots organizations write winning grant proposals.

You will not be writing any proposals yourself, but rather consult with grassroots agencies on making edits and improvements to their proposals before submission. This is a good opportunity for individuals with a specialized skill set or a graduate student who wishes to gain real world experience.

Volunteers should understand the grant application process for federal, state and/or local government as well as private foundations. In addition, they should have excellent writing and grammar skills, attention to detail and the ability to understand basic financial and budgetary matters.

Food For Life: The Hungry Need Us. We Need You!

The cost of providing a family of four with nutritious Kosher meals for 2 months? $720
The cost of providing Sabbath meals for one senior for an entire year? $360
The big smile on a child's face that just had their first decent meal in a while?
Priceless.

You have probably heard the expression "food for thought", but what about "food for life"? Met Council has launched a wonderful campaign called Food for Life to help feed the poor and near-poor that do not have the means to feed themselves.

Want to learn more? Get involved to help feed New York’s hungriest families. An evening reception celebrating the Food for Life campaign will be held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Thursday, March 11. Dinner, drinks, and a live auction are included. Click here for more details.

Can't donate? There are other ways to help! Please advertise this vital campaign through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The hungry need us. We need you.

(Image Source: http://www.inforochester.com/images/FoodKosher.gif)