Building and Strengthening Partnerships
 

What a night! More than 750 people joined us to learn and talk about mental health as we kicked off the Annual Campaign.

I always say that it takes a village to put on an opening event, and I want to thank our incredible volunteer leadership, starting with our campaign chair, Lana Marks Pulver. The topic of mental health is very close to Lana’s heart, and she truly led the vision for last night’s event.

I would also like to thank her incredible campaign cabinet, especially Sue Hector and Shay Keil who spoke last night at the main program and at the major donors’ reception, respectively.

Todah rabah to our board chair, Candace Kwinter, who spoke in part about our convening role, which I will get to in more detail in a moment.

Thanks go to our staff team as well. Our new campaign director, Gayle Morris, and her team knocked it out of the park. Becky Saegert, our VP marketing and communications and her department also did a stellar job.

I also want to highlight the work that Alvin Wasserman did to develop the Amazing Happens theme, and the work of our marketing and communications chair, Al Szajman.

Our speakers, moderators and panelists made this event very special. Thank you to Mayim Bialik, Jonathan Cohen and Marsha Lederman; Dr. Sandy Penn Whitehouse, Alisa Farina, Danya Rogen, Dr. Annie Simpson and Tanja Demajo; and Fran Drescher. The students from King David High School who sang the anthems did so beautifully, and I want to thank them as well.

We are also grateful to Rabbi Infeld for reading a prayer on the passing of Her Majesty The Queen and leading the moment of silence where we remembered The Queen and those from the James Smith Cree Nation area in Saskatchewan who were killed.

With the Lieutenant Governor as our honourary patron, our Federation had a connection with The Queen, just as now we have with The King. We offer our deepest condolences to the British Royal Family as they mourn this tremendous loss.

While our event focused on mental health, this is not the only issue we are addressing in the campaign. Nor are we the only organization involved in addressing mental health.

Convening is one of our key roles, but it may be one of the least recognized or understood aspects of what we do. One of our strengths is our ability to bring people and organizations together to create synergies, develop new approaches, and build community strategies through collaboration. We can also help heighten awareness of important issues, which is one of the things we did last night. We had not themed a campaign opening around a single topic before, but it felt right to do a deep dive on this topic.

We are also here to build new partnerships and strengthen existing ones.

Many of our partners work in the area of mental health and the work they do is amazing! Representatives of these organizations each have a voice on our Child and Youth Mental Health Committee:

Jill Diamond
Lana Marks Pulver, Annual Campaign chair 
Michelle Gerber 
Donna Cantor, Vancouver Talmud Torah
Tanja Demajo, Jewish Family Services
Alisa Farina, Jewish Federation
Matti Feigelstock, Project L’Chaim
Rabbi Gabay
Efrat Gal-Or, BBYO
Ben Horev, The JCC
Sandy Penn Whitehouse
Shelley Rivkin, Jewish Federation
Liza Rozen Delman, Camp Hatikvah 
Trilby Smith, Camp Miriam
Lu Winters, King David High School

This committee came together in response to community wide concerns about the impact of the pandemic on child and youth mental health and to make recommendations to benefit the community at large.

One of the recommendations they made was the creation of the new position of child, youth and young adult mental health worker that has just been filled by Alisa Farina.

This approach is not unique for our Federation. Through our planning and convening roles, we act as an incubator for new approaches or to test new models, and then our partners take the lead. We support them and strengthen them every step of the way, and a successful Annual Campaign plays a huge role in our ability to do that.

With the Annual Campaign now in full swing, I want to remind you that this is a time to focus on tzedakah and what we can do for our community.

If you have a canvasser, I hope they have reached out to you. If not, you can make their job a bit easier and reach out to them. If you received a letter from us about your gift, please reply today or go online to make your gift.

When it comes to partnerships, our advocacy agent, CIJA, is always looking out for our community.

Today I want to bring your attention to an action alert. Late in August, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh sent an email to supporters setting out his party’s demands regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, using divisive rhetoric that infantilizes Palestinians, demonizes Israelis, ignores the reality on the ground, and does nothing to advance peace in the region. Tell the NDP to stop using divisive rhetoric and to support peace. Take action now. 

I also want to congratulate CIJA on their excellent Municipal Elections Townhall that they hosted this week in partnership with SUCCESS. Kol hakavod!

This week we marked the 50^th anniversary of the Munich Massacre, which made an indelible impact on the life of our past board chair, Karen James. Those of you who know Karen will remember that she competed at the Munich Olympics and had a very close encounter with the terrorists that impacted her greatly. I want to share this video in which she reflects on this important anniversary.

Since we like to end on a happy note before Shabbat, here is a look at the “amazing” sticker board that people contributed to last night. We asked everyone to finish the sentence “Amazing Happens when...” either with one of our stickers or one that they wrote themselves. Have a look at what people had to say, and then look for the sticker board at the JCC (hopefully—stay tuned) very soon. We would love everyone to have a chance to participate.

Shabbat shalom.

Ezra S. Shanken
CEO, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver