Monday marked the first official week of summer. This year, post-COVID, the world is ready for all the fun that summer brings and that many of us were denied last year….travel, beach, lakes, backyard barbeques, and summer camp. Over six million American children participate in some sort of day or overnight camp each year. Many of these camps are nonprofit organizations. Last year, while many children were quarantined in their homes camp did not happen for these kids. Now more than ever these children need to reconnect, have fun, and learn.
While Charity Matters is my passion, my day job is running a non-profit leadership organization, which also has a summer camp program. We have incredible high school and college students volunteering to serve as camp counselors and mentors. Many counselors are alumni of our program and want to give back to an organization that changed their lives. Students teaching students to be the best of themselves. Showing one another respect, how to learn from different opinions, and how to work together towards a resolution. Ultimately, teaching students how to lead.
Last year, we sent camp in a box and sold out our online program. Tomorrow, I will happily be greeting hundreds of smiling faces as our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders arrive with their nervous parents. For some, it will be their first time away from home. All of these children have been isolated in some way this year. It is such a great feeling to bring everyone together. There is no greater joy than knowing that you are part of something bigger than yourself and that your work makes a difference. This video below from one of our students a few years back, pretty much says it all.
Nothing brings greater joy than planting the seeds of compassion in these incredible students year after year. When the world seems to get a bit crazier, these students give me hope. I can’t help believe that our children will be better than we were, they will learn, listen, come together to lead us all. These children are our hope. As one of our students said, “It is an eyeopener to learn that you can do something to change the world...”
Charity Matters.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is officially fall, a season of change, and a time to witness the glory of fall leaves and shed the old before moving ahead. It is a season of change. Living in Southern California Fall isn’t usually a season for us. Sure we all fake it with decor and pumpkins but nature isn’t showing us the way as it does in the rest of the country. So this weekend, as I head to the east to catch a glimpse of real Fall, I find myself pondering the greater meaning of the changing of the seasons.
Change
These past seven months every one of us has faced extraordinary change in one way or another. Whether it’s as simple as not going to church, as difficult as not going to school, or as complicated as health issues, missing elderly family members, financial struggles, or employment. In one way or another, we have all experienced incredible change and loss. Some days it feels as if we are living in an alternate universe with our sense of “normalcy” gone. Many of us are waiting for things to “return to normal.”
LOSS
We cling to the past and life as we knew it. Much as a tree tries to hold onto its leaves as fall tries to shake them down. I think about the changes some of our oldest citizens have witnessed in their lifetimes. Some born before the 1918 pandemic witnessed World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the list goes on. Each major world event created enormous loss and each event changed life as they knew it forever. The leaves fell off, one by one as each old way of life was blown away. No matter how hard we try to hold on, the change is here and it is inevitable.
Honestly, for me, I think I am just beginning to process it all. So much happened so quickly between the pandemic, the economic aftermath, George Floyd, hurricanes in the south, and then our wildfires here in the west. Those fires, some of which still burn, have destroyed more than a million trees that will not grow this year. Just as the pandemic has taken more than a million lives across the globe. The loss is unimaginable in so many ways.
Regrowth
However, if there is one thing I know about the forest, is that after a fire and complete destruction. The soil is fertilized and ready to begin again. That change, even the change of colors on the most beautiful fall tree will lead to loss. And that loss whether of a way of life, of a loved one, of a job, of school, will inevitably lead to a rebirth.
I will be walking in the fall foliage this weekend, seeing the beauty of change and the shedding of old leaves. I will be thinking about the opportunity for growth, a place to start anew, and a moment to mourn the beauty of what was.
CHARITY MATTERS.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
I was raised to never discuss religion or politics, to respect everyone’s beliefs and to always be open to learning from others. Faith plays a large part in my life and in my nonprofit work. The nonprofit a group of us founded over seventeen years ago provided chaplains of all faith to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. That experience confirmed to me that believing in something bigger than yourself is something that will always serve as a life anchor, whatever that belief is.
I took my current job as the Executive Director at TACSC mainly because I loved being a part of planting the seeds of compassion in our children and teaching students about service. Right before COVID, I had the privilege of meeting Avram Mandell, who is doing similar work with youth but taking it to a whole different level with his nonprofit Tzedek America. Let’s hope that as millions of children get ready to begin school this month that they have access to the incredible experiences Tzedek America is providing.
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what TZEDEK America does?
Avram Mandell: We engage Jewish teenagers through immersive social justice experiences. We try to teach empathy and not sympathy and we are trying to move the needle in the social justice world by connecting these teenagers to social justice issues and to people affected by these issues. The best way to do that is through stories and meeting people and coming into proximity with those who are dealing with these issues as opposed to watching a documentary or reading an article. After kids go on our trips they begin volunteering, donating their time, running drives at their school getting, and their parents involved. We are really seeing the impact of our work.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start TZEDEK America?
Avram Mandell: I have a Master’s in Education from Hebrew Union. I had worked at Jewish Summer Camps, been a youth group advisor, and had experiential learning in my blood. I ran school programs, adult learning programs, garden programs, video programs always acting as an innovator and creator. My attitude in life is that there is always a way to make things happen.
In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit I wanted to go and get my hands dirty and really do something about this national natural disaster. So I reached out at the synagogue and twelve teenagers volunteered. We had a contact at the Methodist Church in Pearlington, Mississippi and we set out to do flood relief work. We all had a powerful experience bringing hope to that part of the world. I remember when we went to our cots there were little bags for us with toiletries and notes from kindergartners thanking us for volunteering. I had never been a recipient and it was such a beautiful moment for all of us.
We came back from the trip and all of those students wrote their college essays about this experience which was transformative. Teenagers care about social justice but they don’t know what to do about it. So I wanted to create an organization that would engage Jewish teenagers in their Jewish values and that those values support their passion for doing good in the world. I wanted to give them the tools to do something about it. We began in 2014, as a gap year program and people started calling and asking for half-day trips and then four-day trips. We were taking kids to skid-row, the border, and giving them these incredible experiences and word started to get out.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Avram Mandell: I think one of our biggest challenges is staffing. How do you find someone to be part of a start-up and has that same passion that fuels you to do this work? It’s one thing when the founder is up until 1 am working but if I am just an employee I don’t have that same commitment. As we grow you try to do it all and realize quickly that you can’t. So, how do you find the staff member that is fun, engaging, charming, a good educator, good with teenagers, organized to plan the logistics of all our trips and experiences?
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Avram Mandell: The feedback from our work reminds us that this is worth it. Knowing we are having an impact. I get the results I want from our students. I just got a text an hour ago of a picture of third-graders writing notes to people in detention centers. It turns out that the 9th grader that went to one of our trips at the border was sharing her experience with this third-grade class and the third graders were so inspired that they wanted to write welcome to America notes. That is why we do what we do.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Avram Mandell: We brought a group of 6th graders to a recovery group. A 27-year-old woman shared her journey with our students. After her story, the 6th grader said to the woman, “You are such a strong woman, we have so much to learn from you.” The little girl went on to say that she struggled with her relationship with her parents and told the woman what a great example of strength she was.
We create these experiences for teenagers on a weekly basis that students would not ordinarily have. The students learn that we are all just human beings. We all have so much in common and so much more to learn from one another.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and What has your impact been?
Avram Mandell: Our impact is the stories like the one I just shared. It wouldn’t be the statistics. When you show up at a nonprofit with a group of teenagers and recognize one of the volunteers and say, “Don’t I know you?” She says, “Yes, you brought me here three months ago and now I volunteer here.” Then you ask is she doing this for required community service hours and she replies, “No, this is just what I do.”
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for TZEDEK America, what would that be?
Avram Mandell: I would love to have our programming in different cities so we can affect other students with what we are doing. I would love to have more capacity to make that happen. There is a quote from a book called Ethics of Our Fathers that says, “You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to desist from it.” We know the ripple effect of our work and those we impact is large.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Avram Mandell: I have learned so much from our program. I know more about immigration than I knew before, I know more about homelessness than I knew before. I am more socially aware and socially engaged than ever before.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Avram Mandell: I think about my eulogy a lot. Eulogies are about people’s relationships and about people being there for one another. I think about the educational concept called design with the end in mind and the creators of this concept who wrote a book about what do you want your end to be? I think about my end.
What do I want the end to be? I want to see that my kids and students are volunteering their time and that they know they have an obligation to make the world a better place. You can not ignore the problem. That is my end. When my students have kids and take them to volunteer somewhere. When my students live their life with meaning.
CHARITY MATTERS.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
“It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.”
The Scarlet Letter
My son and husband have COVID. By the time you read this “had” will be more apropos. Not to worry they are physically fine. I am COVID free. They are only two of over four million people that have had this. The fascinating thing about COVID is not the physical ramifications but the mental. There is a Scarlet Letter C for COVID. For the first time in my life, I can relate to the character Hester Pryne from The Scarlet Letter. We have not hung a huge scarlet C in front of our house but it feels as if we might have one.
the Love-Hate Relationship with COVID Statistics
Every night for months the evening news covers the daily statistics of COVID. The number infected, tested, active cases, deaths, and the list goes on. These numbers are people. They are not numbers and there is a difference. At this writing, there have been over 140, 000 people in the United States who have died. According to the LA Times, Floridians over 65 are dying every eight minutes, due to this horrific pandemic.
Before I begin my observations on the mental health of COVID, please note that I am in NO way stating in ANY way that being seriously ill or death is a comparison to the mental health aspects of this virus. It most obviously is not. What has been fascinating to observe is how people react and how people treat you when they know there is an active COVID case in your home.
The Human Experience and COVID
When you hear that people are all over the map with their thoughts about COVID. Pro-mask, Anti-masks, Pro-school-Anti-School. That is true. People are emotionally all over the place when it comes to COVID. Wherever you are on this is ok. I am not here to judge but here to tell you what this feels like on the receiving end. Every day for the past 12 days we have felt as if we are in the middle of a bad psychology experiment. When you tell someone your child has COVID and is safely quarantined (as are we) the reactions run the gamut. It doesn’t matter if is your family, dear friends, neighbors, or co-workers. I haven’t tried with strangers yet but maybe their reactions are better?
Our first encounter was with our neighbor who was walking his dog. My husband and I saw him from about thirty feet apart and we spoke telling him that our son has COVID. He literally ran away while suggesting a podcast for good information. His fear was real. Totally understandable but we have never had anyone run away from us before, so that was a first.
The Scarlet C
Dear friends have reacted with anger, shock, shamed us, questioned us, and rejected us. The anger, “How could you let your son go on a father-son boating trip in a pandemic? What did you expect would happen? You are an idiot!” For the record, every person on that trip has tested negative twice, so the source is still a mystery. Can you really get COVID from a gas pump? Think we know the answer.
Shock and awe. Many friends are stunned and curious. Our son is the first person they have known and they have a million questions about exposure, symptoms, how we keep ourselves safe from him, quarantine, testing, and protocol. That is a whole different post on the misinformation of COVID that I will spare you all.
Shame and Shunned
To be told that we are not welcome regardless of testing, quarantine, following CDC, and doctor’s guidelines. Well, I have to admit, that one stung a bit. We have been very honest and open about the situation, obviously. Our medical advice has been excellent, all of which we have followed to the letter. Who knew that Zinc and a thousand milligrams of Vitamin C helps keep you COVID free?
However, being banned/shunned made me wonder if we actually had a Scarlet C on our home or our caller ID? It made me wonder about Hester Pyrene and truly understand how she felt. Just as the book said, “It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself.” It is bad enough to be away from your other children, your family, friends, and the world for 14 days. It is not fun. It is sad, lonely, depressing, and isolating. That is for us that are “healthy” and without symptoms. I can’t imagine adding being severely ill to how people with COVID must feel?
Kindness and Compassion
To end on a positive note we have had more than a handful of amazing friends who offered to get groceries, run errands, or bring anything we needed. We had one friend drop off beautiful vegetables from her garden. One family has face-timed our son every night just to check in on him and it was honestly the highlight of his day. All of these gestures of kindness were THE best medicine. Feeling loved, connected, and cared for is what we all truly crave in life.
I have to confess that I struggled with sharing these observations. Knowing that I am opening myself up to a million more opinions and emotions that honestly, I’m not sure I can handle after the past two weeks. However, with all of the overload of information out there I could not find anything about the human reaction to COVID. These are our experiences, perhaps not everyone’s. My hope is that when you know someone who is quarantined (and chances are you do) that you reach out with kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Charity Matters
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
“I would so much like young people to have a sense of the gift that they are.”
John Denver
You are never too young to change the world. Those are words from my recent conversation with Jack Adler and his twin sister Kate, the founders of the 3Dollar Challenge. Jack and Kate are 19-year-old twins from Villanova, PA who reached out to me a few weeks ago via Instagram about their cause.
While they have not yet started a nonprofit, they have started a movement to inspire giving and action in the face of COVID. It all started in early April when Jack sent his sister a text asking her if she wanted to do something to support COVID relief. Her answer was yes and that was the beginning of the $3 Challenge. I hope these two inspire you as much as they inspired me!
Charity Matters: What was the inspiration behind the 3 Dollar Challenge?
Jack Adler: This whole idea really stemmed from us being forced to leave college early from Coronavirus and we were sitting at home for a couple of months in quarantine. We realized that we were lucky enough to be healthy and not have any of our loved ones struggling and fighting for their lives with COVID. We knew that there are people fighting every day on the frontlines fighting to save lives and fighting for their own lives and it felt selfish to act like just because we were safe we didn’t have to help.
One day and I came up with an idea to fundraise for Coronavirus relief and I called my sister into the room and we started brainstorming different ways. And together we came up with an idea to start an Instagram challenge.
Kate Adler: I thought an Instagram challenge was a good idea but none of the challenges had a donation component. We are both majoring in business, I’m at the University of Miami and Jack is at Syracuse University and we wanted to use our entrepreneurial skills to try and help. I felt like it’d be a really cool idea to make the Instagram challenges into something more like with this donation component for Coronavirus relief. So we brainstormed and we had a whole launch setup where we texted all of our friends that it was coming.
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about how the 3 Dollar Challenge works?
Jack Adler: The concept is simple. First, you donate $3 viaVenmo @threeDC or throughbit.ly/lemonadefund(select referred by 3 Dollar Challenge). Then post an Instagram story of something you cannot wait to get back to after quarantine. Lastly, tag @3dollarchallenge and nominate at least 3 more people to do these steps.
Kate Adler: We used Venmo to make it easy and accessible and set up Go Fund Me to accept donations larger than $3. We partnered with a group called Makin Lemonade that was the same age doing the same thing and the result is over $117,000 raised for Feed America, CDC, and Direct Relief, all split equally.
Charity Matters: Did you have any idea what you were starting?
Jack Adler: Well, we originally were like, let’s raise a few hundred dollars for Coronavirus. Surely it’ll we’ll feel good about ourselves and we will know that we’re making a difference and within 24 hours raised over ten thousand dollars.
It started with us getting our immediate friends to tag their friends who weren’t in our mutual friend circle. It started there and it was just an exponential domino effect of them tagging three people then tagging three people and before we knew it, there were thousands and thousands of people around the nation who we didn’t even know posting for the three-hour challenge within 24 hours.
We had thousands of posts we reached people that we had, we obviously didn’t know. And it just completely blew our minds. It was so exciting. We had big thousand follower accounts posting for us just seeing it from other people was so cool. It was really awesome.
Charity Matters: Had you ever done something like this before? What were your previous experiences with volunteering and charity?
Kate Adler: We hadn’t had a huge background in philanthropy, our parents taught us to give back, and when we were little we did a lot of lemonade stands. We mostly raised money for different children’s hospitals and our grandfather who had Alzheimer’s. Then in high school, we became the co-presidents of a club called Jerry’s Box that supported kids with cancer. We lead a team of 200 students once a month, packaging toys, and then delivering them ourselves. So that was honestly our first big experience in philanthropy and giving back.
Charity Matters: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Kate Adler: At first we were like, wow, this is so easy because you’re kind of just soaring and donations are coming in. Literally, like 10 donations a second, it was crazy. But then once it started to lose steam after only really only a couple of days, we said we need to figure out a way to keep it going. We don’t want to stop after one burst of Instagram stories. We had to reach out to literally hundreds of people.
We’re direct messaging everyone we knew from different schools, influencers, celebrities, news channels, really anyone we could. Anyone that could probably spread the challenge to their networks and that helped a lot. After our $10,000 push, we ended up raising another $8000, just from reaching out to people we knew and getting news coverage and things like that. So I think the hardest part is definitely just keeping it going because we want it to keep going for as long as possible.
Jack Adler: Honestly, I think our biggest challenge was raising $10,000 in 24 hours and then knowing that inevitably, we’re not going to keep that same steam because we really had hit our peak of trendiness on Instagram for that one day. And it was really cool because we had to really push ourselves and find ways to keep the challenge spreading. We really got to learn from the experiences of the grind. We had to prove to people that we’re legit
Charity Matters: What Fuels you to keep doing this work?
Jack Adler: It just feels so good. It’s a really, it’s really cool for us to be able to mix our passion for entrepreneurship with our passion for giving back. We just love coming up with different ideas to help people and it’s fun, it feels good and it really is addicting.
I would say, our realization that we have to keep going with the Three Dollar Challenge is as much as it is a passion it is also a responsibility. At this point to use the platform that we’ve created to continue making a difference and continue helping people. It would feel selfish and wrong to not keep doing it. Because while we are having fun with it, it’s also helping so many people and we want to keep doing that.
Kate Adler: I would agree, I just think it’s such a drive to keep going. I think what really helps our momentum is aiming the direction in new ways. So we started a tic toc challenge because that’s been really popular. And honestly, it didn’t work the way we wanted it to. It didn’t really pick up momentum, which was like a great learning experience just because something worked and some things don’t.
Charity Matters: When did you know you made a difference?
Kate Adler: I would say a big wow moment was when a couple of accounts were created that are like the $4 challenge. People started other Instagram donation challenges and actually wrote in the comment of their pictures like we’ve been inspired by the $3 Challenge to start this organization. At first, I thought they’re copying us. But then we actually realized that it is really cool to see other people kind of like taking what we’ve done to make a difference.
Charity Matters: Tell us about the success and impact you have had?
Kate Adler: I think besides the funds raised another huge impact was just on people our own age and younger too, because people kind of saw it and they’re like, wow, these kids are our age. We can do things too. And I think it probably motivated a lot of people to look for ways to give back. I have noticed a lot of people reached out to us asking for ways to get involved and what more they can which was really awesome.
Jack Adler: I think the realization of the power of social media to see that it can be used to spread a positive message and make a positive difference. And we kind of figured out a loophole, I guess you could say, of a way to use this amazing power and influence of social media and the ability to reach thousands of people so easily. And we used it, not to spread a comedy or entertainment, but to spread a way to help the world out.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization what would that be?
Jack Adler: I mean, we’ve been working on getting on The Ellen Show, which would help spread the word around the nation. But in terms of like the actual growth of our brand, we really want to turn it into something where we can pivot towards different causes. Whenever we feel that we see a cause it needs our attention, and have the platform to be able to do that and raise thousands of dollars every time.
Kate Adler: I think another one of our big goals is to actually allow other nonprofits to use the concept of the $3 challenge. But we think it’d be really cool if a nonprofit said, “Hey, we love the $3 challenge. We would love to run a $3 challenge through our nonprofit.”
Charity Matters: How has this experience changed you?
Kate Adler: I know I’m speaking for Jack, but I think our family was surprised that quarantine motivated Jack. He had this new drive and motivation.
Jack Adler: I did take the driver seat, which Kate usually does. We have changed from this real-world experience. This will be a story that will change our lives forever.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Kate Adler: It is never too early to start giving. College has taught us so many business strategies but it has been great to learn while doing. We have loved motivating other kids to follow in our footsteps.
Jack Adler: I think the most important lesson I have learned is that we are not too young to change the world, you are never too young to make an impact and we are ready to make a difference.
CHARITY MATTERS.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
As the world opens and we all slowly come back out of our cocoons like caterpillars who turned to butterflies navigating life from a somewhat different perspective than ninety days ago…I find myself flying above my former self in search of my mojo. The metamorphosis has happened to us all. A mere three months ago I was high functioning, multi-tasking, get it done sort of person. I could be on a conference call while emptying the dishwasher, texting, and juggle a multitude of tasks all of which made me feel successful, productive, and most importantly busy. Always busy.
COVID
Every pre-COVID moment from the 5:45 am wake up until 11 pm at night was scheduled, programed, crammed full of tasks, meetings, calls, and to-dos. Then after March 13th all of that changed. The first few weeks of quarantine were rainy, cozy, and almost felt like a holiday break with everyone home. I have always worked from home so that wasn’t anything new to me.
However, having the whole family at home working and going to school remotely was new. Making fifteen meals a day again was new. No early mornings at the gym and navigating new ways to manage exercise and stress were different. And as each little piece of my previously scheduled life eroded so did my mojo. Like sand in my hand, it just slipped away one grain at a time.
Caterpillar
The early morning dash to the gym became coffee in bed until seven. The online workouts became less about exercise and more about noticing every home improvement needed in the room. Once the “workout” was over, I stayed in my workout clothes until late in the day. Why not? There was nowhere to go.
Lip gloss and makeup were reserved for Zoom meetings only. The days to do list became shorter and shorter until they didn’t exist. Time and urgency seemed to disappear. The cocoon became a safe harbor from all of the chaos outside.
Courage
Then suddenly, the announcement came that the world would begin to reopen. Little by little our cocoons were broken open. Now that we were “free” to go, I wasn’t sure that I wanted too. My former self, the one that made the cozy and now organized cocoon, would have boldly dashed out into this new world without fear and a to-do list a mile long. However, my post-COVID self was a fragile butterfly that came out ever so slowly was not the same creature pre-quarantine. The mojo and courage were nowhere to be found. A metamorphosis had occurred.
The fear lingered and my fragile wings slowly began to flutter outside of the cocoon. Ready to explore but there was no urgency or speed. Time had dissipated, what mattered before no longer made sense. Schedules, planning, and lists all seemed like things of the past.
The courage came to be, and stay in the present. Slowly, the new butterfly saw all the beauty around, the faces of her family, and the beauty of each moment. The mojo was gone and replaced with what matters….health, family, love, security, and faith. The butterfly’s voice said, “What good are wings without the courage to fly?” Ever so slowly the butterfly fluttered out into a brave new world.
CHARITY MATTERS.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.
“A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.”
Chinese proverb
Duet Team
There is not a human on this planet who has not had to adapt and change these past few months. We have all been faced with new and difficult challenges with daily life and work in these unprecedented times. Nonprofits are no exception, sadly many nonprofits are closing, as a result of the economic downturn. However, a number of savvy nonprofits have pivoted to meet the challenges of the times, and Duet is one of them.
I was recently asked to be a part of a judging panel for The USC Marshall School of Business Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab where exciting innovations from students are making our world better. One of the finalists was the nonprofit Duet, you may remember our interview a few months back. I was so impressed with how this team took their nonprofits model and pivoted to meet the needs of Angelenos who are transitioning out of homeless that I thought an update was in order.
Charity Matters: Tell us about what Duet Does?
Stephanie Van Sickel:Duet introduces a new model of philanthropy that connects donors, beneficiaries, and local struggling businesses in a dignified, efficient, and effective way.
Here’s how it works- We partner directly with local stores which allows our beneficiaries, or clients, to self select the items they need, taking a picture and uploading it to our client app. It’s important to us that our clients are given the autonomy to tell us what it is that they need because we believe that when organizations make assumptions about beneficiaries’ needs and wants, they naturally get them wrong. On our website, donors can meet our Duet client’s and view their requested items. Once a donation is received, we send the money directly to the local store and a pickup code to the client who is able to go back to the local store to easily pick up the item.
Duet provides direct support for beneficiaries in a way that is direct and dignified, provides increased transparency for donors, and lifts local economies, integrating our clients as permanent members of the community and promoting long-term economic growth for the neighborhood.
Charity Matters: explain how and Why you decided to pivot Duet?
Rhys Richmond: Although we had been thinking of expanding to LA for quite some time, COVID-19 drastically accelerated our timeline. We decided to move fast and pivot to supercharging our LA expansion schedule. These past few weeks have been quite the sprint to get Duet LA version 1 up and ready to support our first LA beneficiaries!
Our ability to help our refugee families has been limited by stores closing across Greece with no time to reopen. Moreover, we tuned in to the rise in the urgent needs of our fellow Angelenos.
Charity Matters: What did you need to do to make this happen?
Michael Cesar : Well, first we all had to get on the same page and figure out exactly what we wanted to achieve. This was going to take a huge team effort and we all needed to be pulling in the same direction. There were three main challenges: how were we going to get in touch with our new beneficiary population? What changes did we have to make to our technology? How were we going to attract new, LA specific donors? We upped our Zoom contact hours and put our heads together.
We’ve successfully solved those challenges by partnering with Safe Place for Youth, and First Place for Youth to introduce us to young Angelenos in need, partnered with Everytable to provide hot cost-effective dinners and have launched an LA fundraiser to jumpstart our donor base! (https://giveduet.org/campaigns/la-covid-19)! We plan to go live with our official platform enabling individual donors to sponsor dinners right as the campaign concludes.
Charity Matters: Tell us what you have done to pivot to meet the needs of Angelenos since COVID?
Stephanie Van Sickel: As USC Trojans, the Duet team is committed to bringing our solution home to tackle the challenges we are facing in our own communities in Los Angeles. The urgency of COVID-19 has driven us to begin providing solutions today for our community by helping to fulfill immediate needs for some of our most vulnerable populations starting with young adults who are transitioning out of homelessness. This group of young Angelenos has recently been disproportionately impacted by layoffs, furloughs, and reduced work hours and it is expected that many of them will be forced to deplete their savings within the next 10 days, leaving them at immediate risk of becoming homeless again.
In a slightly modified version of Duet, neighbors will help neighbors by funding high-quality and cost-effective meals, sourced from local restaurants that are struggling to survive in the pandemic. Los Angeles is a city ready to come to the aid of its own and Duet enables Angelenos to simultaneously help both our most vulnerable residents and their favorite local restaurants.
Last week, we launched in LA providing our first hot meals through our first restaurant partner, Everytable (an incredible LA Social Impact Venture focused on food accessibility), for our first LA client through our first nonprofit partner, Safe Place for Youth (an incredible nonprofit serving homeless youth in the Venice area). We are excited to see Duet’s impact in Los Angeles grow and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Charity Matters: Can you share a story or an example of your impact?
Rhys Richmond: Our first LA beneficiary is Lilly, who we met through Safe Place for Youth. She is a 22-year-old student currently completing her prerequisites for nursing school and caring for her 7-month-old daughter. Our partnership with Everytable is working out especially well for her since she needs to adapt her nutrition to figure out what is causing an allergic reaction for her daughter – we’re able to work with Everytable to get her meals that are high-quality and meet that need.
Stephanie Van Sickel: Last week, we launched in LA providing our first hot meals through our first restaurant partner, Everytable (an incredible LA Social Impact Venture focused on food accessibility), for our first LA client through our first nonprofit partner, Safe Place for Youth (an incredible nonprofit serving homeless youth in the Venice area). We are excited to see Duet’s impact in Los Angeles grow and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
COVID is certainly a word that I can’t wait to remove from my vocabulary. It has turned our planet upside down and literally stopped most of the world….with the exception of a few amazing people, one of them who I had the good fortune to talk to last week. Her name is Summer Germann and she is no stranger to hospitals, illness, tragedy or adversity. What is remarkable about Summer is that she uses all of this adversity, including COVID, as fuel for good. She is a bright light who started a nonprofit, business and most recently reached out to her team to begin manufacturing PPE (personal protective gear) in the form of masks for thousands of health care workers across the country. A modern-day hero. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Brave Gowns does?
Summer Germann: We manufacture hospital gowns for kids, these are not standard hospital gowns. Brave Gowns transform the spirit of a child and allow them to use their imaginations. We didn’t want to just do a tchotchke gown where we put a design on it, so we recreated an entire design that could access the patient’s entire body without having to move them. I felt like just because you’re going through treatment doesn’t mean that you should lose like all modesty and pride, right? So teenage girls or women or even boys can stay covered while they access any part that is needed. So that was really important to me that we actually had a quality product that is made here in the United States.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Brave Gowns?
Summer Germann: In 2002, I had lost my only sibling, my little brother, Mac who was 10 years old to two types of leukemia. I happen to be 15 years older than Mac and was 25, when Mac went to heaven in 2002. He was discharged the morning before Thanksgiving and he was to come home for Thanksgiving the next morning.
Mac was hooked up to a dialysis machine and had never asked my mom to come to lay in bed and hold his hand. He was 10 and all boy, and he said, “Can you hold my hand?” So she crawled in bed with him thinking, maybe it was good to get rest. And she woke up to the machine beeping and Mac in cardiac arrest.
So honestly, there are so many blessings in the story. We had a whole year where Mac was in the hospital and we really just had that year to spend with him. We catered to him, with what we didn’t know at the time was a bucket list. It was non stop. I spent that night before he died with him. So if we had to lose him or for him to go, it was just the most perfect way. How many people get to have that gift?
I knew there’s no way I’m going to have this lesson in life and go back to a “normal life.” I knew I had to take this experience and do something with it. And it took a long time, it took 12 years, it wasn’t like I walked out of the hospital knowing what that was. I worked with my brother’s stem cell transplant team and his head nurse at the time when he was sick. 12 years had gone past and we created this ultimate gown in 2015.
Charity Matters: Explain what Happy Ditto is and how it is related to Brave Gowns?
Summer Germann: I started the nonprofit Happy Ditto (which is happiness doubled) first because I was so adamant about making sure this work was all done through a nonprofit. Happy Ditto is a nonprofit where people can buy or sponsor hospital brave gowns for children. Then I got to a point where I had to turn it into a business as well because we were getting orders from hospitals that can’t purchase from nonprofits. I just made sure all the bases were covered, as long as we get the gowns to the kids.
Charity Matters: How did you decide to get into the PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) for COVID?
Summer Germann: Friday, March 13th I called my designer and I knew we had to figure out a way to help. We had talked about making masks and families have asked us for years. I knew we could make them fun. I called my factory and told them what I wanted to do and they had already started a prototype three weeks before. I said you have to give me a product that I believe in and this isn’t about money. It was supposed to be retailed at $12. We brought it down to $9 and we incur the shipping to get into the hospitals They sent over the prototype and I said, “Okay, I just launched.” By Monday we had 11,000 orders.
We are breaking even and not doing this for profit, there probably will come a time where mask are the new norm and someone will be pursuing that but right now, someone will call and say,” I really am in a situation I need a mask.” Then I’m just overnighting it.
Charity Matters: What is it like trying to keep up with the need and demand?
Summer Germann: We have shipped over 30,000 masks in less than two weeks. We’re doing mask for the military at Camp Pendleton, for police precincts, I think we have sent to something like 177 precincts for New York. We’ve sent off to over 40 hospitals, we have a huge list.
And then we also have people purchasing masks in bulk and they’re sending them to hospitals with us. So they’re just been going in every direction every which way. And then we have another line that’s for individual orders. And I know everyone’s scared because I can tell you we’re getting 2800 emails a day.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Summer Germann: Staying true to exactly what our purpose is. To be honest, I’ve received all of these offers to buy our company but they came with manufacturing in China. I want the children in the best quality gown I can give them as fast as possible. All of our products are made on-demand, they’re never sitting on a shelf and never sitting in plastic. They are manufactured and within three to five days and on a child. I just think it’s at a time where the kids are so sensitive and from infection, this is not the time to have gowns sitting for six months in a warehouse.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Summer Germann: I think everyone behind the scenes is my grandma or in a family with a medically fragile child, like Mac, and they’re all scared, right? All we did was create a better product and we’re sending them out there. We’re doing the best we can in the midst of this truth. We have three shifts going and opened the second factory. I saw a news story last night that said that the BraveGowns are slowing down the Coronavirus. That people think that, well that’s wonderful. I never even thought about our work like that. I just feel like I’m just giving people a piece of comfort.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Summer Germann: I really don’t. I feel like we’re just getting started five years in. I said recently,” I finally see the beginning.” I tried to explain it to someone the other day that is not in business. And I said, “I feel like we’re in the middle of building a house. And all I see is I’m standing in a kitchen that’s just gutted and chaos all around me.”
The first two weeks of the 2800 emails and I was like, oh my god this isn’t working. I was still like, I’m still trying to stop and make dinner and do dishes like you know, like still just normal. I think that article yesterday would be the first time where I actually thought wow, people are believing in me a lot more than I see what I’m actually doing.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Summer Germann: I know it’s bigger than me. And it’s time for me to be a really great ambassador for it and say goodbye. I think there’s so much potential for Brave Gowns to be the new norm, it deserves to be the new norm. I think it’s time for me to be the voice of Brave Gowns and show up where I need to, but let someone else run the show.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Summer Germann: I haven’t changed I think in that’s what was really important to me, I really haven’t changed and I would still give the shirt off my back for anyone. I am still the person that walks in the post office and says something to make everyone laugh. I think my story is about just believing in yourself and knowing that you could do life differently, right?
It was not easy and but I stayed true to exactly what we started and who we wanted to be. And I think that’s really what this is all about. I hope that someday my whole story shows that you don’t have to do it a nine to five in a cubicle. You can take the risk you know, there’s so much more in life than just being okay and surviving. Go live. Right? And I think that’s what the whole thing.
There are so many times where my family only had faith. Faith was all we had. I don’t go to church. I just know that I’ve always had this in me. It’s not like I believe in God, so everything worked out. But I believe that everything that I went through and every hard moment, he had a greater purpose.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Summer Germann: I can see so many lessons where I shot myself in the foot. I think just knowing your way. It’s like it doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. Right? I’m just saying to the woman that has this vision and dream. It doesn’t matter where or what’s behind you, we are in a world of opportunity. Everything is so untraditional right now, tech companies are going back to hiring people without a college degree because they need people that think outside the box. Just always know your worth.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have haD and what your impact has been?
Summer Germann: We have given over 450,000 Brave Gowns in 387 children’s hospitals in seven countries. I spent five years not building a business, I built relationships with people. I built trust. Someone will text me and say,” Is this really Summer?” Yes, this is really Summer. I got a call from a nurse in Florida who has COVID her husband’s deployed. Her parents are in Texas. And she’s like, I just have no one to talk to you right now and she talked to me. And this was two days ago, that’s exactly why I’m here.
Those are the moments that I think are worth it. At the end of my life, I hope to God people really know that I cared. It wasn’t about like yes, I have this wonderful life now. It’s just the blessing of just being there for people. The impact is to think that I’ve brightened up inside the hospital walls and that the kids are in superheroes and princess costumes and that’s miraculous, right? But I also know there are 3.4 million children in the hospitals and I’ve only gotten 450,000 gowns out there.
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