Why I Give
NEWSLETTER SPRING 2010
Contents
How Two Students Took Action for Haiti
By Jamie and Nicole Odzer
We are sisters who live in Miami. A few months ago, we had an idea: we wanted to help the earth and people at the same time, but being only in middle school we were unsure how we could help.
After doing some searching on the internet, we discovered Lambi Fund's project to plant trees in Haiti. It was perfect! Our bat mitzvah was quickly approaching and it's customary to do a mitzvah project - some sort of good deed, as part of the process.
After looking some more on the internet, we found that the American Jewish World Service supports Lambi Fund through the AJWS site. There we could set up our own fundraising page, with all donations going directly to Lambi Fund.
After setting up the fundraising page, we set a goal of raising $5,000 and started emailing all of our friends and every adult on our bat mitzvah invitation list. We sent solicitations out on January 9th- just three days before the earthquake.
Of course, after seeing the devastation of the earthquake on television we were heartbroken. Immediately, we re-wrote our email solicitation and sent it out again.
The response was tremendous, and by the time of our bat mitzvah ceremony on February 13th, we had nearly reached our goal — raising more than $4,000!
Once we each make our own contributions, the total will be closer to $6,000. At our bat mitzvah ceremony we mentioned the Lambi Fund of Haiti in our speech to the nearly 300 guests, and the web address of our fund was included in the program handed out to every guest.
We, Jamie and Nicole, feel tremendously proud to be able to help Haiti. The entire experience has been truly humbling, and the thought that our work may actually help some people live better lives is truly a blessing.
