National Council Of Jewish Women Incorporated

Programs: Hunger program:over three million new yorkers have difficulty affording food; they are out-of-work families with children, elderly people who live alone, and the working poor who cannot afford to pay for both rent and food. They are also the homeless who live in shelters or on the streets. In response, our programs provide nutritious and wholesome food served in a friendly, hospitable manner. Our monday food pantry provides a three-day emergency supply of both fresh produce and shelf-stable groceries to families in need, and our twice weekly community kitchen provides a hot, delicious meal to all who need it. Patrons of the community kitchen sit down to a hot meal or, alternatively, may take away a brown-bag meal. The hunger program served 35,000 new yorkers during our last fiscal year. Responding to 2017's political discourse, ncjw ny was especially concerned about our spanish-speaking immigrant clients, who make up the majority of our food pantry participants. We partnered with other non-profits to address concerns and meet the needs of this group, for example hosting the urban justice center to provide a "know your rights" workshop during the food pantry hours. In addition, our social worker is always on-hand to help clients with resources and referrals around issues such as housing and health care, as well as immigration services.

council lifetime learning (cll):cll promotes healthy aging for active older adults on the upper west side and beyond. Cll's robust roster of more than 30 weekly classes, discussion groups and events, with an emphasis on arts and culture, engage and empower participants. Cll provides a supportive environment helping older adults continue to learn and grow, thereby defying society's age-related stereotypes. In fy'17, approximately 500 active seniors participated in a broad range of programming, including everything from art and exercise classes to engaging lectures and discussion groups. In addition, our staff social worker helps cll participants with the challenges they face as part of the normal aging process. In fy'17 we held several successful events, including our first-ever fall open house, to welcome the community into our spaces to learn more about our programming and to sample classes. We also held a very successful holiday art exhibition and sale, allowing our students and teachers to show off and sell their work to neighborhood residents. Also in fy'17, we completed a comprehensive stategic marketing plan, with special funding from the fan fox and leslie r. Samuels foundation, to devise strategies to better market our programs and services and ensure full utilization.

advocacy:we maintain strong relationships with our state and local elected representatives. We invite experts to speak to our members about issues that concern us and our community. On the national level, members from ncjw sections all over the country meet every three years in washington, d. C. For intensive briefings and advocacy efforts with top political leaders and experts on relevant issues. Ncjw, inc. Has a professionally staffed washington office that advocates at the federal level and helps coordinate grassroots advocacy nationwide throughout the year. Locally, over the course of fy'17, ncjw ny held several educational events around the issues of sex trafficking and reproductive justice, reaching over 400 people; advocated in albany with state legislators on access to contraception and abortion; and participated in the fight to protect vital nutrition assistance to new yorkers in great need.

helen bloom lunch, interaction, nurturing, and companionship program (linc)linc is a day program that engages adults suffering from memory loss and mild to moderate dementia through art, music, and recreational activities. Participants attend together with their caregivers, facilitating positive interaction and modeling engaging activities. Participants engage in discussion, arts & crafts projects, and other activities. They enjoy lunch together, followed by singing and dancing with musicians trained in working with this population. In fy'17, linc received a special gift, in honor of the memory of helen bloom, renaming the program and allowing us to expand the program to three days a week, on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. Linc serves a roster of approximately 14 seniors, with approximately 8 to 10 attending on any given day. The program is small and intimate by design, allowing the staff to provide individualized attention to each participant throughout each session. Pregnancy loss support program (plsp)plsp utilizes professionally-trained volunteer peer counselors to provide telephone counseling and in-person support groups for parents who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or newborn death. This unique form of grief is still often stigmatized and misunderstood. All of our volunteers have been through the program themselves, so they can speak from experience to grieving parents, and at the same time continue their own healing process through service to others. Plsp served approximately 100 families in fy'17. Bereavement support groupsfor many years ncjw ny has offered two weekly loss recovery groups for those who have lost spouses, led by our staff social worker and open to men and women. In fy'17 our social worker, in response to community needs, changed the focus of one of these support groups, to serve people who have experiences a mix of losses, including children, siblings and friends. These groups have served approximately 8 people each weekly throughout fy '17. Lastly, we provide a monthly "transition" group, serving 10 participants, to help group members move on the next stage and to make room for newly bereaved participants in the weekly groups. In addition, we offer a weekly caregivers support group for people caring for elders with memory loss and dementia. The group meetings are times to coincide with sessions of the helen bloom linc program, and serves approximately 8 people weekly. Children's literacy programour reading tutors program aims to engage children in a lifelong love of books and reading, and thereby help to close the gap in school performance for economically disadvantaged children. We work in partnership with community-based after-school programs, providing one-on-one reading sessions once-a-week to approximately 70 children total. Volunteers supply age-appropriate books chosen to spark the children's interests, and children keep the books once they have read them, building up their own home library over the course of the school year. In fy'17, ncjw ny added a third reading tutors site in partnership with lincoln square neighborhood house on the upper west side. Our other two partner sites are union settlement in east harlem and university settlement on the lower east side. Back 2 school storein august 2016, our second annual back 2 school store provided 186 children from low-income families with a complete set of new clothing and supplies to prepare them for that all-important first day of school. We transformed our program site into a pop-up department store for one day, where children were paired with volunteer personal shoppers to choose pants, tops, sneakers, socks, underwear, a parka, and a backpack to fill with school supplies and a reference book. Choosing their own items is exciting and empowering, and feeling prepared for school is proven to increase attendance and improve performance throughout the year. We partnered with 8 community-based agencies to select and pre-register children, ensuring that they met specific eligibility criteria. Scholarship programjackson-stricks scholarship provides financial aid that enables students with physical challenges to pursue academic study or vocational training which leads to independent living. This past year, ncjw ny provided two students with financial aid totaling $5,000. '