Mazon Gives $20,000 in Grants to Seven Relief Organizations

The national Jewish hunger relief organization Mazon, which emerged less than a year ago as a concerted Jewish response to hunger, announced here that it will award some $20,000 in grants to seven relief organizations.

The largest grant, totalling some $10,000, will go to the Boston-based international development group American Jewish World Service for use in an agricultural development project in Sri Lanka.

The six other grant recipients are: the West Presbyterian Church Senior Center in St. Louis: the East Dallas Cooperative Parish: the Jewish Foundation for Sustenance of Righteous Gentiles; the United Jewish Council Sabbath Lunch Program in New York; the Maryland Food Committee; and the California-based Sova group.

The grant announcements followed a meeting of the Mazon Board last week. The group, which has raised $78,000 to date–most of which has gone to setting up the organization’s infrastructure in cities across the country–encourages voluntary contributions of a three percent surcharge on the cost of Jewish affairs including weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

AN ASSESSMENT OF HUNGER

Board members heard an assessment of hunger in the United States at the meeting here from Larry Brown, chairman of the Department of Public Health at Harvard University. Brown represented Mazon’s advisory board at the meeting.

Hunger in the United States, Brown said, is a symptom of a totally different malady than that of African countries. “We have enough food supplies not only to feed our own people but to feed the whole Third World,” Brown said. “But we don’t have a system to insure that food reaches people.”

Hunger in the United States rose drastically in the final year of the Carter Administration, and the problem, according to Brown, has been “greatly exacerbated” during the Administration of President Reagan.

THE POOR GET POORER

The “safety net” of welfare and other types of aid to the poor has some gaping holes, Brown said. In 1983-1984, the government slashed $12 billion from the food stamps program that many of America’s hungry depend on.

These cuts, coupled with a tax structure under which the poor get poorer contributed to the rise in hunger in the decade, he said. Brown encouraged the Board of Mazon to concentrate their funds on public education, oriented to challenge public policies which he said created hunger in this country.

Danny Siegel of the Mazon Board advocated funding for only direct, front-line hunger relief activities. He urged the Board to be concerned with feeding people with a minimum of overhead and bureaucracy, and suggested making food barrels for the hungry a standard item in a every synagogue, along with the Torah and the eternal light.

Following is a listing of the Mazon grant recipients:

The American Jewish World Service received $10,000 for its project in Sri Lanka which will channel money and Israeli agricultural expertise into an indigenous self help group already existing in the small, poverty ridden island just south of India.

Sova (Hebrew for satisfaction from eating) will receive $1,250 to purchase basic food items for the opening of its second hunger relief center in Fairfax, California.

Maryland Food Committee, a Baltimore relief agency, will receive $1,250 for a public education campaign on solutions to hunger. The money will purchase posters for targeted neighborhoods which explain how to budget for food, how to stretch a dollar and other important nutrition information.

The United Jewish Council Sabbath Lunch Program on Manhattan’s Lower East Side will received $2,500 to purchase weekend meals for elderly, homebound or homeless individuals.

West Presbyterian Church Senior Center in St. Louis, Missouri will receive $1,250 to buy delivered meals for the elderly in that community.

East Dallas Cooperative Parrish provides emergency services for hungry Asian immigrants in the Dallas area. A grant of $1,250 will go to purchase food for emergency relief.

The Jewish Foundation for the Sustenance of Righteous Gentiles provides goods to those who saved Jews and others from Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. Many of the Righteous Gentiles live in poverty around the world today, according to Leonard Fein, editor of Moment Magazine and a Mazon Board member. A grant of $2,500 to the organization will be used to locate these people and provide aid.