Campaign at $7 million
Despite hard economic times, total is almost at 2007 level.
RON FRIEDMAN
"We made a push and crossed the seven million dollar mark yesterday, just in time for the interview," announced David Berson, director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver's annual fundraising campaign. Berson spoke to the Jewish Independent about the campaign, its goals and challenges, the people involved and the benefits to the community that arise from it.
"The big story this year is that given the economic climate, donors came through in a major way," said Berson. He acknowledged that, while the campaign would not likely meet the target of eight million they set out for at its start, "We are hoping to match what we did last year." In 2007, Federation canvassers managed to raise a record- breaking $7.5 million. This amount, said Berson, should allow Federation to maintain its commitments to the 27 local partner agencies and the nearly 40 overseas programs it helps fund.
Berson, together with campaign chair Judi Korbin, is in charge of the fundraising effort that includes a 400-person-strong network of volunteers, who approach community members – by phone or, in some cases, in person – and ask for a gift to the community. So far, the campaign has received approximately 3,700 individual gifts, which Berson equates to 14,000 people, based on the assumption that many of the gifts are from families getting together to donate.
"We [in Vancouver] have the highest rate of penetration on the West Coast," said Berson, referring to the percentage of donors relative to the given population. In Vancouver, 15 per cent of the people on Federation's list made gift donations. In 2007, the average donation was $2,000, with gifts ranging from chai (18) dollars to chai times 1,000 or more.
Berson said the global economic crisis has definitely had an effect on some donors, especially the older ones, who are concerned about their pensions and are feeling pressure in terms of possible losses of disposable income. Nonetheless, he expected canvassers to solicit donations in much the same way as in previous years. "There was a degree of empathy and understanding towards our donors – if someone is in dire straits, we accept that with understanding – but people that are in need are in more need now than ever."
Helping people in the community who are in need is one of the main priorities of the campaign and, in order to bring the needs of the most vulnerable to light, the campaign has held three missions, in which canvassers and donors were shown around the Jewish Food Bank and various care facilities.
"People can live and be a part of the community and not realize the magnitude of the need and how much the campaigns can influence people's lives," said Berson. "Fourteen per cent of the Jews in Vancouver live below the poverty line. For many people, this is a shock. For some, it is a wake-up call."
The other two key priorities of the fundraising effort are "engaging the next generation" and "strengthening Jewish education and identity," said Berson.
Berson also spoke about a recent mission to Israel, where donors could tour the country and see what their donation dollars achieve there. Between 35 and 40 per cent of Federation funding goes toward programs in Israel and the people on the mission got a chance to see that their money was being put to good use, in a counselling centre in Sderot and children's programs in Kiryat Shemona, among other places. Berson noted that all of the funding goes towards programs and organizations that operate within the Green Line and that none of the proceeds go to the Israeli government or military.
One of the biggest challenges, according to Berson, is reaching out to the thousands of Jewish people in the region who are not directly connected to the community. "However," he said, "over the last few years, we have been doing a better job doing outreach to the regional community, places like the North Shore, White Rock, Richmond and with the Burquest community out in Coquitlam, Burnaby and the rest of the Fraser Valley."
Another challenge of which Berson spoke is achieving the cooperation of some of the new immigrants in the community. People that come from Mexico, South America or the United States are used to the idea of the community needing to support itself through donations, said Berson, but others, who come from places like Israel and the former Soviet Union and are used to all of the services being provided by the state, are unaccustomed to the level of involvement in the community.
In order to face some of these challenges, Berson said, "the campaign will move more and more towards specific messaging and segmentation," in an effort to make fundraising more effective.
Berson said that the campaign was a great opportunity for the people at Federation to receive feedback on their work and to hear from the community members about their own priorities as to how they would like things to be.
"You hear ideas all the time, there are a lot of creative suggestions," said Berson. Some people are passionate about Israel and want to see more being done to strengthen it, while others are more concerned with issues of continuity or Jewish education. "Our commitments and priorities are always driven by our donors," he added.
The slogan of the 2008 campaign was "Live Generously – Together We Do Great Things" and Berson said that he felt it had a real resonance. "Every year, we talk about people and causes in need. This year, we decided to celebrate and take pride in everything that we as a community have achieved together."
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TAG talks online safety
Parents and teens learn to use the Internet wisely.
SARA NEWHAM
“The foreign influence of the Internet and its universal presence in our lives and homes poses a greater risk to Jewish thought, life and culture than did the Greeks in ancient times."
That was how Rabbi Stephen Berger introduced an Internet safety workshop for parents and teens at King David High School on Dec. 15.
About 100 people attended the event, which was hosted by TAG, a student-centred Jewish educational and social program for teens that promotes learning and critical thinking. Designed to give both parents and teens information and tools to equip themselves for the threats posed by Internet use, the workshop resonated with attendees.
"It was a really big eye-opener because I didn't know that all these things could possibly happen to me just for talking to my friends online," said 14-year-old Jacqueline Kierszenblat. "I'm really gonna be a lot safer and make sure I know everyone on my list and change my privacy settings so only I and my friends and the people I want see to see my stuff can see them."
For two hours, representatives from Safe Online Outreach Society (SOLOS) told each age group about various safety concerns on the Internet, useful in an era where reportedly 23 per cent of youth spend more than three hours a day online. Everything from MSN Instant Messenger, Nexopia, Facebook and cyberbullying was discussed during the presentation and, while parents gasped at the threats their children may encounter, they may have been even more shocked to learn that most of the 46 students in attendance had multiple e-mail addresses and more than 100 online instant messaging buddies and at least a dozen had – even if inadvertently – been exposed to online pornography. While some students were taught about the Internet by a sibling or a friend, most of the kids taught themselves.
"I think that young people are using these technologies even more so than the adults. Adults don't have a lot of the tools that they need to really properly educate their children on this stuff and so the youth in a lot of cases are going online and learning themselves and a lot of youth are finding ways to do that in a safe way and sometimes there's gaps in their understanding," said Dolphin Kasper, a program facilitator with SOLOS.
Parents learned that they need to engage with their teens and how rules, like not meeting online acquaintances in person, can cut the incidence of such in-person meetings from 34 per cent to 15 per cent. They were advised to keep computers in open areas – not in a teen's bedroom.
They also learned the grim realities of cyberbullying, which can be worse than traditional in-school bullying because of the speed and breadth of technology. To that end, parents were advised to encourage their youth to print out an example of someone bullying them online.
"It was really useful. A little scary. I had no idea about some of it," said Liz Komer, a parent of two teens. Komer said she plans to have a discussion with her children about their Internet use. "Would you let your kid go to Brazil? You want to find out as much as you can about it and that made me really realize how much I don't know and how much I need to work on this."
Teens on the other hand, learned to restrict their privacy settings to only their trusted friends on Facebook and other social networking sites, to check the content in their shared folder on the computer when using peer-to-peer sharing sites and to be wary of the photographs they post. Kasper told the students that every Internet site is archived at archive.org so items posted on the Internet stay there, forever. He explained that employers now search the Internet before making hiring decisions and, if a compromising photograph is found, it may destroy a youth's chance at a job now or in the future.
"I didn't realize that people could take my picture and change it to make it look like I was doing other things," said Kierszenblat.
While the Internet can be used for positive interactions and online learning, it takes only minutes to alter a completely innocent photograph into something more detrimental. Kasper also told the kids that people who use Facebook agree to allow Facebook to use their information and material however they want in perpetuity.
"It was good so more people are informed about what can happen because I didn't know that everything that's on Facebook is saved forever. Not that I have anything bad but if anything was ever potentially used somewhere else," said Talya Cohen, 14.
Sara Newham is a Vancouver freelance journalist.
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