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"We empower people and, once you empower someone, and they start using their talents to help people - whether it's IT, making phone calls, driving and doing deliveries, engaging and speaking with people, packing or helping to cook stuff - they feel important and needed, and have a certain sense of achievement. I run Chabad House, together with my wife. That's our job. It's a synagogue and a community center, supported by fundraising, and we had all these different types of activities and programmes going on - our Summer Scheme, trips, baking classes for boys. Some are purely social, some are educational, and some are reaching out and helping families who need help.
"When the first phase of the lockdown happened, we had to completely shut our doors. So, with a team of volunteers, we'd go to people's homes and drop off food packages, provisions for Jewish holidays, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and talk on the doorstep. We also did art classes on Zoom, after we'd sent them painting materials and a bottle of wine. And we organised webinars like our 'Woman of Courage'. For 3 or 4 months, every Monday night, we had a woman talking about the challenges that they had and how they overcame them. There was a core from Manchester, a core from here, and a sprinkling of people from around the world - some evenings we had 600 or 700 people. It was something that just gave people encouragement to keep going. It was beautiful to see them go from being lethargic and depressed to just coming out of themselves, while still in their own houses. It made such a difference to them that they were able to interact with each other even over Zoom. You get a certain joy, when you put work into something and it works."
"We empower people and, once you empower someone, and they start using their talents to help people - whether it's IT, making phone calls, driving and doing deliveries, engaging and speaking with people, packing or helping to cook stuff - they feel important and needed, and have a certain sense of achievement. I run Chabad House, together with my wife. That's our job. It's a synagogue and a community center, supported by fundraising, and we had all these different types of activities and programmes going on - our Summer Scheme, trips, baking classes for boys. Some are purely social, some are educational, and some are reaching out and helping families who need help.
"When the first phase of the lockdown happened, we had to completely shut our doors. So, with a team of volunteers, we'd go to people's homes and drop off food packages, provisions for Jewish holidays, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and talk on the doorstep. We also did art classes on Zoom, after we'd sent them painting materials and a bottle of wine. And we organised webinars like our 'Woman of Courage'. For 3 or 4 months, every Monday night, we had a woman talking about the challenges that they had and how they overcame them. There was a core from Manchester, a core from here, and a sprinkling of people from around the world - some evenings we had 600 or 700 people. It was something that just gave people encouragement to keep going. It was beautiful to see them go from being lethargic and depressed to just coming out of themselves, while still in their own houses. It made such a difference to them that they were able to interact with each other even over Zoom. You get a certain joy, when you put work into something and it works."
"We empower people and, once you empower someone, and they start using their talents to help people - whether it's IT, making phone calls, driving and doing deliveries, engaging and speaking with people, packing or helping to cook stuff - they feel important and needed, and have a certain sense of achievement. I run Chabad House, together with my wife. That's our job. It's a synagogue and a community center, supported by fundraising, and we had all these different types of activities and programmes going on - our Summer Scheme, trips, baking classes for boys. Some are purely social, some are educational, and some are reaching out and helping families who need help.