eJewish Philanthropy
One in five American Jewish households are financially insecure, according to a statistic quoted by Rachel Sumekh at a recent Jewish Funders Network conference. Sumekh is the new project executive for JFN’s National Affinity Group on Jewish Poverty and is working to increase education around Jewish poverty and mobilize JFN’s members to address it. In addition to deepening education for funders, Sumekh says the affinity group is “also working to lift up the work of the amazing community organizations,” including Jewish Family Service. In San Diego, JFS has partnered with San Diego for Every Child to launch the region’s first guaranteed income project, with the goal of significantly reducing the experience of child poverty and lifting families out of poverty. “I think there’s a really important moment in time right now,” Sumekh said, “for us to really raise the people’s recognition of how much people are barely making it day by day.”