Good Friday morning!

Moving Traditions, which guides Jewish teens through discussions surrounding adolescence, gender and discrimination, has hired Shuli Karkowsky as its new CEO, eJewishPhilanthropy has learned.

Karkowsky is departing Hazon, the Jewish sustainability and environmental group, where she has served as executive vice president since 2019. Her move comes as Hazon merges with Pearlstone, a Jewish environmental retreat center near Baltimore. She will succeed Deborah Meyer, who is stepping down 16 years after founding Moving Traditions. Karkowsky will take over on Feb. 7.

Shifting her professional focus from climate change to gender, Karkowsky said, doesn’t feel like a long leap. In both organizations, she said, “We’re using the lens of Judaism to make the world a better place, and by engaging young people with this work we strengthen their relationship with Judaism by showing them the deep roots of these values in Jewish texts and Jewish tradition.”

A challenge that likely awaits Karkowsky is navigating evolving norms and language around gender. Moving Traditions runs three separate discussion groups for male, female and trans, nonbinary and LGBTQ+ teens, as well as an all-gender space. “There’s really old research about what makes young people thrive, and all of that research is already antiquated because things are changing so rapidly when it comes to gender,” she said. “I think we’re in a moment where we’re keeping an open mind.”

Before Hazon, Karkowsky, 38, worked for 70 Faces Media, UJA-Federation of New York and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She is joining a growing number of female CEOs in the Jewish nonprofit world. According to a report last year from Leading Edge, which surveys Jewish nonprofits, 45% of Jewish organizations that submitted responses were led by women, up from 30% in 2018. Across the field, nearly 70% of employees at those groups were women.

One reason for the gender gap, Karkowsky believes, is “an inability to see people with young children as able to take on the trials and hard work required to be a CEO. It’s also clear from my career [that] I will be a better CEO because I have young children — because I know how to listen, because I know how to prioritize, because I know how to manage with firmness but with love.”

In 2020-21, Moving Traditions served upwards of 4,500 preteens and teens in its core discussion programs, with a $3.6 million budget and a staff of more than 30. Karkowsky hopes to expand Moving Traditions’ partnerships with other Jewish youth programs, especially following allegations in recent years of a sexist culture at youth groups, and also wants to partner with Orthodox groups. This week, she was the first-ever woman to run the Tu B’Shevat Seder, a ritual meal on the Jewish new year for trees, at her Orthodox synagogue. “It was a moment to be like, ‘Wow, we have an educated woman in our midst,’” she said. “How do we take advantage of that? How do we make sure she has a podium?”

TIKKUN OLAM

How soap is changing women’s lives around the world

Courtesy

On a post-college trip to Thailand, Erin Zaikis met a group of school children in a small village on the Thailand-Myanmar border who didn’t know how to use soap. “I couldn’t believe it, because I’d never really thought about soap once in my life… It is just always where I needed it to be,” Zaikis, 32, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther Kustanowitz. Zaikis soon learned that – due to lack of access to soap, clean water and functioning toilets – millions of children were dying each year from conditions like diarrhea and pneumonia. Much like the challenge of world hunger, she realized, global hygiene suffered from a problem of “access and distribution,” she said. 

How it started: With the seeds of a project growing, she pitched the idea – a nonprofit recycling gently used hotel soap – at a competition sponsored by LinkedIn, won a “big Styrofoam check” for $10,000 and founded the Sundara Fund in 2013 (“Sundara” means “beautiful” in Sanskrit). During Sundara’s first seven years, Zaikis and her team worked across India, Uganda and Myanmar, hiring more than 40 women and providing them with their first-ever formal employment. Sundara recycled over 1 million bars of soap, while reaching 200,000 people with intensive hygiene education each year. The nonprofit also created hygiene education modules in local languages, reaching an estimated 3 million people, Zaikis said.

COVID complications: At Sundara’s peak, the organization had 10 factories (in India, Myanmar and Thailand) and 43 employees. But when COVID-19 hit, the organization lost more than 400 hotel partners – representing 75 percent of their operating funds – in three weeks as thousands of planned visits were canceled. It also had to cancel its annual gala, where the organization had traditionally raised the majority of its U.S. funds, she added. “It was just very hard for us to survive that time financially,” Zaikis recalled. “And the world has never needed hygiene education more.” 

Pivot: She realized the organization needed to refocus its investment on women in these countries who were potential changemakers. Sundara raised around $100,000 and put it into RISE, a social innovation fund to financially empower women who might otherwise have been marginalized and unable to support their families. (The organization is now called RISE by Sundara, while Sundar India continues to provide soap and hygiene products and education.)

Money talks: In a new episode of “The Five-O-One” podcast, Zaikis told host and philanthropy advisor Talia Lefkowitz that supporting a factory in India costs between $25,000-$50,000; that supports full-time work for four to five women and brings soap to about 200,000-250,000 children each month. To support one female changemaker for a year, it costs $7,500, she said. Changemakers are currently operating in Indonesia, Nepal, Zimbabwe, India, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, Zaikis told Lefkowitz. 

Read the full story here.

just be present

Encountering — and supporting — scared children: What’s a Jewish educator to do?

Roman Kraft/Unsplash

“In the next few days and weeks, the Jewish world will continue to proclaim meaningful and significant slogans including, ‘don’t let the terrorists win,’ ‘we will return even stronger than before’ and ‘we must all persist in fighting the oldest hatred in the world.’ But along with these sentiments, demonstrating perseverance and strength in the face of adversity, we must also acknowledge and speak about our fear — especially as it affects our children and youth,” writes David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

What we must do: “As Jewish educators, we can be there for our youth as they grapple with the uncertainty of this complex world. Often this entails being there for their families as well. My best advice to Jewish educators who are encountering scared children, no matter what the age, is to first listen and then offer answers only as best you can. Acknowledge and accept their fear — and your own if that is authentic. You also can say, ‘I don’t know either’ and ‘I can’t explain.’ These meaningful interactions, premised on simply being there, are the first stage of this learning journey. Gradually, strive to empower your youth to respond to these events on their terms. While terrorism takes away our agency, our response must be to control what we can.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Donor Collective: The Jewish Community Foundation San Diego (JCF) has facilitated grants on behalf of a collective of donors to 12 local nonprofits as part of its new and innovative “giv4 homelessness in san diego” initiative, reports The Del Mar Times. “This initiative, designed to engage all of San Diego in supporting solutions to homelessness, collects donations and distributes 100% of the funds received to the nonprofits. Since its launch in August 2021, giv4 has raised over $235,000, with donations ranging from $15 to $25,000.” [TheDelMarTimes]

Pic of the Day

Azrieli Group

The Tel Aviv planning and building committee gave the green light for the construction of a 91-story, 1,150-foot (350 meters) tower by the Azrieli Group that would make it the second-tallest structure in the country. Above, an artist rendering.