A lovely Partnership project was initiated within the Women's Division of the United Jewish Federation of Stamford, Connecticut. A group of mothers decided to do a mother/daughter project. The mothers wanted to encourage their daughters to take responsibility for a Tzedaka project for which they would decide how to raise the money and to where the money should be donated. Two of the daughters claimed the project for their B'nai Mitzvot mitzvah project.

The daughters came up with the idea of making chocolate, selling it and then giving the money they would make to a worthy project in Afula-Gilboa, their Partnership 2000 region in Israel.

With input from the Living Bridge Coordinator, it was decided to use the money earned through selling the girls' homemade chocolate to buy English readers for the library at the Ner BaGilboa Elementary school in Gan Ner in the Gilboa Regional Council.

The Ner BaGilboa Elementary school in Gan Ner in the Gilboa is a very new school, beginning its fourth year and has very limited resources. The addition of the newly acquired English readers to the library shelves of the school was deeply appreciated by the 5th and 6th grade English students who use these readers to enhance their English learning in its beginning stages. Ronit Lev, the school principal and Michal Bitan-Olshck, the English teacher are both extremely grateful for receiving the gift of the English readers from the Mothers and Daughters project in the United Jewish Federation of Stamford, Connecticut.

We all appreciate the initiative shown by the mothers and daughters participating in a worthy project such as this one. We feel that it goes to the heart of strenghtening the people-to-people connections between Afula-Gilboa and the Jewish Communities in the Southern New England Consortium.

  Kislev 5765 - November 2004