Volunteers flocked to help pack and deliver packages in a pre-Shavuos food distribution organized by Chamah.
By Anash.org reporter
Chamah, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid and educational programs around the world, set up a pre-Shavuos food distribution in Crown Heights on Wednesday.
As part of Chamah’s We Volunteer program, which works with volunteers to pack and deliver the food packages to individuals and families in need, dozens of Crown Heights residents showed up to help.
Throughout the year and before Yom Tov, Chamah arranges for over 400,000 pounds of food, including produce, meat, chicken and fish to be distributed, helping to create one million meals for families most in need.
According to a recent report by the UJA Federation of New York, more than 560,000 people in approximately 200,000 Jewish households are poor or near-poor, and 45 percent of the children in Jewish households now live in poor or near-poor households.
The new report found that Jewish poverty in the eight-county New York area affects widely diverse groups of Jewish households. Single-parent households, households that include a person with a disability, and others who are unemployed or underemployed are also heavily represented among the Jewish poor.
But it is also concentrated in Hasidic, Russian-speaking, and senior households, which account for two-thirds of the poverty in the Jewish community.
