The culmination of a great school effort: Honouring our visitors from Manchester

After all that work - a chance to see first-hand where the money goes

We played host on Thursday to about a hundred British guests from the King David High School, the Yavneh Yeshiva High School and Yavneh Girls, in Manchester, UK.

Their visit to Jerusalem's Bet Yad Sarah, from where a Keren Malki Joint Venture with Yad Sarah warehouses, manages and ships home-care equipment to families throughout Israel was a rare and special pleasure for the Malki Foundation team.

The students, all ninth-graders, had taken part during the past year in a variety of activities, mainly of a fund-raising nature, to support the work of Keren Malki. (Here's the September 19, 2014 media announcement.)

The official campaign t-shirt

In large measure, the very positive outcome was the result of tremendous co-operation and support from the campus administration, and in particular the campus bursar Mr David Rose, and Rabbi Jonathan Goodman who headed the project from Manchester. The events of the day itself owed a great deal to the input and assistance of Yad Sarah's personnel under the leadership of Moshe Cohen, the organization's managing director. Special thanks to its spokesperson, David Rottner.

Here's a partial list of what the students did, as recited by Nadia Mechlowitz, a Yavneh Girls student who represented her classmates in a short speech accompanying the hand-over of a donation cheque:

JustGiving page; Zumba class; Pesach cookbook; Bake sale; Bat-mitzvah money; Supermarket bag packing [we reported on that in December 2014]; Family donations; Shpieling (at Purim time); Money-collection boxes placed in shops and restaurants; Kugel and cholent sale; Guessing how many sweets in the jar. And more.

Among the other activities, a Yavneh Boys bike ride raised a considerable sum. They published the group photo below so we could share in the nachat.

Grade 9 Yavneh Boys: A fund-raising bike ride

Some snapshots from a delightful visit:

Arnold Roth, Keren Malki's honorary chairman, with a group
of visiting Mancunian students on the Yad Sarah
8th floor balcony

Formal presentation of one of the donation cheques

Yavneh Girls

Presenting another cheque

We noticed quite a number of students were
wearing Keren Malki wristbands

Hearing first-hand some of the experiences of Shlomo, the father of
a five year-old child with severe disabilities, and about the helpful role
played by the Malki Foundation's team

For students and administrators in other places, it's important for us to mention that at the Malki Foundation we value hugely the goodwill and positive energy that comes from partnering with high-school students. As the KDS/Yavneh experience illustrates amply, focusing on the powerful message of chesed and reaching out to children with disabilities can provide an invaluable moment in a well-rounded Jewish education.