[by Phyllis Shaikun]
Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services (JHHS), parent company and majority owner of Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare, has remained committed to supporting the organization’s health care mission and to strengthening the Louisville Jewish community, which founded Jewish Hospital and contributed to its development into a premier center dedicated medical excellence.
To that end, the organization created the JHHS Louisville Jewish Community Excellence Grants program last year as a permanent funding source for local charitable organizations’ programs that focus on Jewish culture/identity; health; human services and education. Grant requests in any amount may be submitted, but not all requests are funded in full.
The JHHS Louisville Jewish Community Excellence Grants Committee, chaired by Debra Friedman and Dr. Gerald Temes, is pleased to announce the grant recipients for the first quarter of 2011.*
The Jewish Community of Louisville’s biweekly newspaper, Community, serves as the major source of Jewish information for the greater Louisville area. With aging computer equipment that could no longer be upgraded, managing that news, however, had become a critical issue. The merger of the former Jewish Community Federation and the Jewish Community Center to form the JCL in 2009 left little funding available for enhancing the organization’s ability to get the word out about its own activities, programs from the synagogues and other community agencies, and about Jewish Hospital’s accomplishments.
Well aware of this crucial need, members of the Excellence Grants Committee awarded a special grant to the JCL to help expedite their messaging capabilities.
“I am absolutely thrilled and very grateful to receive this funding support,” said Shiela Steinman Wallace, JCL communication director/editor of Community. “Thanks to the grant, our entire Marketing Department will be on the same computer system. The software upgrades will enable us to handle most of the files we receive, to improve our website management and to do more with videos. If not for the generosity of JHHS, we would have been unable to accomplish this very necessary technology upgrade.”
Louisville Girls Leadership, a program of the Alliance for Girls, is excited to have received an Excellence Grant for the updating and promotion of the audio drama, “Brave Girls,” a digital storytelling about the role girls played in the underground resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II.
“We are so thankful and excited about the grant,” said Project Director Marsha Weinstein. “We are doing this program because girls traditionally have been left out of history and their stories are rarely heard. By telling the tale of these brave girls, audiences will be inspired and encouraged to take action for social change.” The “Brave Girls” program, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Sunday, May 22, 3 p.m. at Jewish Hospital’s Rudd Conference Center.”
“Jewish Family & Career Services is very grateful to Jewish Hospital HealthCare Services for our receipt of a Jewish Community Excellence Grant,” said JFCS Executive Director Judy Freundlich Tiell. “The grant will allow two of our staff members to attend a national meeting for Jewish career professionals where they will learn about the most innovative programming being carried out in this country, Canada and Israel. This knowledge will help them better serve many of our clients, from mature workers to the unemployed or under-employed to youth and to people with disabilities. We truly appreciate the opportunity this grant represents for our staff and ultimately for the clients we serve.”
On a weekly basis, the High School of Jewish Studies and the Louisville Hebrew School educate more than 200 students from all of our local congregations. “It is vitally important to provide these young people with the tools they need to learn and grow Jewishly,” says the schools’ principal, Sam Gordon. Having a dependable copier, he notes, is essential to that process.
“We are truly thankful to the JHHS for awarding the schools a Jewish Community Excellence grant to provide for the purchase of a new copier. We are appreciative of their generosity and know our students will reap the benefits for years to come.”
Each year the JCL’s Jewish Film Festival raises the profile of the Jewish community. This year’s Festival with nine full-length and four short films attracted more than 1250 people.
“The JCL is extremely grateful to JHHS for their grant to support the film festival,” said the organization’s Director of Special Events & Fundraising, Kim Hales. “The grant allowed us to offer the entire community even more award-winning, provocative, international films as a means to explore Jewish cultural issues and intercultural communication and to build community awareness.”
“The JHHS board began this grant program in an effort to support the Jewish community, which is part of our mission” said Temes. “The first year went well and we have been able to expand the program even more this year. We are pleased that funding has already helped in the development of new programs that strengthen Jewish identity, health, human services and education, which has been our primary goal.”
*Applications for JHHS Louisville Jewish Community Excellence grants may be submitted year ’round by local Jewish not-for-profit entities and will be reviewed quarterly on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1, for consideration for the following quarter. For more information, contact Lisa Jennings, 587-4230 or lisa.jennings@jhsmh.org. Grant applications can be found at www.jhsmh.org.
