CEH Social Action Committee members hope that everyone is healthy and taking the necessary precautions to ensure continued health. It’s a good time to stay inside and prepare for Passover!

If you’ve hit the supermarket this past week, you’ve seen bare shelves and empty bins, and you’ve returned home without the pantry staples or fresh groceries you’d expected to purchase.  Hopefully this problem will be short-lived and, G-d willing, the once and only time in life that you will experience scarcity.  

Believe it or not, food insecurity and affordable housing are long-standing problems in Arlington and other parts of Northern Virginia. While it is not feasible at this time for CEH itself to provide support to those in need, we as individual members of the CEH community can assist other local non-profits to furnish the goods and services it is their mission to provide.
The following URL takes you to a compilation of non-profit and grant-making entities that desperately need infusions of cash at this time. Several of these invite in-kind donations as well, identified on their “wish lists.”  https://volunteer.leadercenter.org/covid-19-care-community 

Some of the more familiar non-profits included in this listing are the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH) and the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC): 

• https://apah.org/get-involved/donate/ways-to-give/residentemergencyfund/  
• https://afac.org/covid19/  

You may already know that CEH has existing partnerships with Doorways for Women and Families and Bridges to Independence, organizations addressing homelessness.

• https://www.doorwaysva.org/donate/
• https://bridges2.org/donate-now/  

As restaurants, cafes, and other food-related businesses close their doors, food service workers are losing or already have lost their jobs.  The two organizations below serve this population.

• https://www.gofundme.com/f/dmvrestaurantworkerrelieffund  
• https://www.ramw.org/educated-eats  

With people out of work and insecure about the future, pet adoption has declined dramatically, leaving shelters strained for food and supplies. These familiar rescue organizations need help:

• https://lostdogrescue.org/  
• https://www.awla.org/donate-online/
• https://arlingtonhumanesociety.org/donations/

As noted above, the Volunteer Arlington Leadership Center for Excellence has created a master list of worthy non-profits serving Arlington and Northern Virginia in this time of crisis. See https://volunteer.leadercenter.org/covid-19-care-community.  While we all feel powerless to do anything about this world-wide tragedy, by donating funds in any amount, each of us can help mitigate the impact of this pandemic on our community. 

Thank you so much!
B’shalom,
The SAC