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Clintons Lend Support to Family Hoping to Shift the Spotlight to Hostages’ Plight in Gaza

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Photos from the family were provided as a courtesy to the Inside Press

Chappaqua, NY — Former President Bill Clinton and Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton met on November 8th with a small group comprised of family members from Israel — who have multiple family members being held as hostages in Gaza after being torn from their homes and streets on October 7 – and with advocates on their behalf.* The group is traveling the country seeking help to refocus the spotlight back onto the plight of the 240+ hostages as a pressing humanitarian issue.

The Clintons expressed an unerring support of the group’s basic mission to prevent the world from forgetting about the hostages–who include babies, children, women, and the elderly–as conversation shifts to the pros and cons of a ceasefire. They brainstormed ideas in a roundtable discussion both to help define the group’s goals and how they might best succeed.

Meanwhile, the consensus in the room about the need to defeat Hamas was unequivocal. “We have to defeat Hamas and we have to have a process for doing so,” said Hillary Clinton, “and then the hostage situation can be heard more clearly.  People can’t hear it because they don’t hear the other part of the commentary.”

Family members of hostages and their international advocates meeting with Secretary Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton and with Inside Press publisher Grace Bennett

A family member emphasized that any discussion of humanitarian aid absolutely must account for the needs of the hostages as well: 

“People are talking about humanitarian aid going into Gaza. People forget that this is a different situation. Humanitarian aid should go to humans regardless of where they are from,” he said. “As of right now, any humanitarian aid going into Gaza–the hostages were not even on the table.  So, in bringing that up, you can’t separate these two things from each other.”

He noted his own family’s work toward peace and humanity worldwide. “Our family who is being held hostage, are the first to support any humanitarian aid in any situation, everywhere. This is the first time they need it themselves, and time is pressing.  If there is one message that can help right now, it’s that one.”

Hillary Clinton noted that a ceasefire in the first ten days with Hamas was not viable “because there was no basis for it and no recognition of how they would use it. But I think now, the administration is saying, yes, you could have a humanitarian pause in return for the hostages. We should be lifting that up as a humanitarian approach.”

Bill Clinton also explained the risks of a premature ceasefire and the historic sequence of events following one.  “Ever since Hamas has been in power, they periodically act up, fire rockets, get innocent people killed, accept a ceasefire, and then get their money again to buy more rockets and build more tunnels. So where does it ever end?”

An advocate for the family shared that the majority of people in Israel who have been protesting for pro- democracy in Israel and against the current Netanyahu administration are the same people who are very focused on the hostage situation.

“The opportunity for the hostages to be released would be a transformative moment in Israel to also change the discourse about longer term goals, and about peace.”

Emotional moments were shared, as well as expressions of gratitude, as the family continued to inquire what would be the best plan of action in the continuation of their journey.

Stated another family member: “I haven’t said it yet…  I’m sorry I am speaking in emotional language. The world is not safe in the moment, and for us to meet you, and feel your heart is in the right place, makes us feel safer.”

The first family member echoed her sentiment: “Meeting with you… and having this conversation… that there are human beings with their heart in the right place, and also the influence in the right places is meaningful, and also on the personal level, for all our family members as a whole.  We really, really value you as people as leaders, as really smart people, and we really want your advice on how we can continue to fight for our families.”

A discussion ensued over how to pressure the Red Cross to be more effective.

“You have done very important work with the Red Cross… so I believe that you can make a difference pressuring them to get humanitarian aid to the hostages,” she said to Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton agreed that pressing the Red Cross is “an excellent idea” and for that to be effective, they would “need to identify who (in Geneva) can be part of this chorus saying that we have a duty, an obligation, we have a right to send in observers. We need to move on that.”

If there was any good news to glean from the meeting, and which could possibly harken a shorter war, it is that financial support to Hamas may be drying up, Hillary Clinton suggested.

“Hamas as the quote ‘governing authority of Gaza’ has gotten financial support in three ways. Overtly, because there’s a strange relationship between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and Hamas in Gaza–even though they hate each other, and Hamas massacred all of the PLO officials when they took over, but the money that is used to pay quote ‘public servants’ in Gaza–some of it still comes from Ramallah, and some of it comes from Israel,” said Hillary Clinton, explaining the crux of a back door deal.

The second source of funds has been “Qatar as a primary but not the only funder of Hamas.”

 “It has given to Hamas as the ‘governing authority’ to do things allegedly like build schools & hospitals, and so on,” said Hillary Clinton, “but we know they siphoned off billions of dollars to build hundreds of miles of tunnels and the rest of it.”

Qatar’s direct support… while historically used as leverage will stop, she continued, “because Israel will reoccupy Gaza. Basically, that is what Netanyahu just announced. So, we are back to pre-2005… I’m not sure there’s any other choice.”  She said that Israelis may need to “as long as it takes to find the hostages, find the Hamas leadership…and expel them.”

Finally, the third funding source has been covert money that has come primarily from Iran but not only from Iran, said Hillary Clinton, with Qatar playing all sides against the other.  “That is its role in the region. They can be very helpful in that regard, for example as the only country with a good relationship with the Taliban.  When I was trying to get women out of Afghanistan when the Taliban took power, they were the only country that could tell the Taliban to let this bust through.”

There needs to be pressure, she said, that they discontinue supporting Hamas. “We also need a much tougher net to prevent infiltration of weapons and money from the north, from Egypt and the Sea.”

There should be nothing controversial, Hillary Clinton said, “about trying to take back people who were literally ripped from their beds, forced into cars, and forced across the border… it’s a war crime.”

Bill Clinton said that it’s vital for the hostages’ safety that we raise the profile of this. “Given the dynamics of the global press and social media, it’s making us all more superficially well informed. But it’s all so oversimplified. Make people talk about something that is not in the binary framework and that could be the beginning to breaking the ice.”

Following the roundtable and photos, the Clintons continued to speak with family members in small circles.

 

*For transparency’s sake, this writer was graciously invited to join the meeting about midway through its session–as a local publisher and ardent advocate for the hostage release with the perspective of a child of Holocaust survivors. I agreed that the contents of the meeting would be off the record until reviewed. Comments presented here were approved for publication.

 

Former Armonk Resident Lisa Salko Presented 13 Driver’s Licenses at the North Castle Public Library

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PHOTOS BY MIA BROWN

Salko’s Talk Took Place on the 85th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

When she was growing up, former Armonk resident Lisa Salko knew very little about her family’s past during the Holocaust. But all that changed with a Facebook message from a German high school student named Victoria Thiel who was working on a history project.

In 2017, a small village in Germany’s Bavaria called Lichtenfels had found 13 licenses in a brown envelope in a back-room cupboard in the district office while digitizing town records. The licenses were confiscated from Jewish residents during Kristallnacht also known as the “Night of Broken Glass” in 1938 in which Nazis arrested 30,000 Jews, destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, homes and synagogues and murdered 91 Jews and injured hundreds, marking the beginning of the Holocaust.

The licenses had been there for almost 80 years. Instead of digitizing the licenses and archiving them in Bamberg as required by law because they are historical documents, the district administrator, Christian Meissner instead got in touch with history teacher Manfred Brösamle-Lambrecht who taught at the local high school.

Brösamle-Lambrecht, who is not Jewish, cared deeply about the fate of these former Jewish residents and thought it could serve as a teachable moment for his students in his History Seminar class to research what had happened to these 13 individuals, and also try to locate their descendants. And so, his students at Meranier-Gymnasium Lichtenfels embarked on a yearlong project that changed all their lives.

Salko’s grandfather, Sigmund Marx and two great uncles, Alfred Marx and Alfred Oppenheimer drivers’ licenses were among three of the 13 confiscated licenses. Salko and her two sisters happened to all be together at Lisa’s nephews’ wedding in Florida when Thiel first reached out. After months of communication back and forth, they were invited to Lichtenfels for a week to learn about the project. The trip coincided with the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. “We went and it was extraordinary. We thought we would just hear the student’s presentation in a classroom, but it was a big deal. It was in the school’s auditorium and the entire community and press was invited to attend. The licenses were returned to us by the district administrator. “It was a life changing moment for my sisters and I.” Lisa and her sisters spent their time in Lichtenfels learning about their family history all while getting to know the students, their teacher and all the people involved in the project. Friendships were formed that continue to this day.

“It was an incredibly overwhelming and emotional week but also enlightening for my sisters and I.

On the eve of our departure, I made a promise to the German students and their teacher and said I don’t know how I am going to do this, but I am going to get this story out there and that’s what I pursued upon my return,” said Salko.

A Promise Turns into an Award-Winning Documentary

Salko got in touch with the White Plains-based Holocaust & Human Rights and Education Center (HHREC) and they put together a panel exhibit that was a replica of what the students in Lichtenfels had created. Since 2018, as a member of the HHREC’s speaker’s bureau, this journey has taken Salko to numerous synagogues, libraries, schools, Baruch College, The Museum of Jewish Heritage, the German Consulate in NY and most recently at Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Israel.

“We’re very happy that Yad Vashem showcased the exhibit and talk, accompanied

by our Director of Education Steve Goldberg. Lisa Salko is a strong speaker who tells the story with passion and vigor and so 13 Drivers’ Licenses has become one of the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center’s most popular exhibits,” said Millie Jasper, the Executive Director of the HHREC.

In 2020, Brösamle-Lambrecht wrote a letter to the German Consulate in New York telling them about the project and Salko’s lecture and panel exhibit which would be presented at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC. The Consulate co-sponsored Lisa’s event at the museum. They were so impressed by it that they asked Salko if she’d be willing to help create video content about the project for the consulate website. Although Salko is not a filmmaker, she was committed to getting this project off the ground. “After numerous zoom meetings with the Consulate, we thought it would be a short video, maybe a few minutes long,” recalls Salko. Salko’s determination along with her ability to maintain and pursue connections were crucial to helping to turn the story into an award-winning short documentary.

In 2019, Salko presented at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale and an audience member, Elisabeth Gareis introduced herself. Gareis, who is not Jewish, grew up in Lichtenfels and is a professor of Intercultural Communications Studies at Baruch College. “She was fascinated by the story. I call her my groupie as she has seen me present so many times,” jokes Salko. At her presentation at Manhattanville College, Gareis introduced Salko to her husband, Ryoya Terao, a film technology professor at the New York City College of Technology.

Salko asked Tarrytown-based Terao if he’d be interested in working on the video content on behalf of the German Consulate. The story immediately appealed to him. “We wanted to tell a different kind of story from other Holocaust-related films – something that is hopeful for the future,” said Terao. Then the pandemic hit. As fate has it, Gareis and Terao were quarantining in Lichtenfels to stay with Gareis’ elderly mother who still lived there. With the help of Brösamle-Lambrecht, they were able to track down the students who were now in university and began filming them. Salko served as a consultant on the film.

Tarrytown-based Terao had never filmed a documentary about the Holocaust, but he has created many short films focused on human rights. At press time, the 27-minute long short documentary, 13 Drivers Licenses, has appeared in 37 film festivals in 17 countries (including the U.S.) and has won 28 awards. It was just selected to be a part of the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAAF) in late October in San Francisco. Terao is working on a longer feature length documentary with many of the Holocaust survivors and their descendants who were interviewed.

Screening in Armonk

The short documentary 13 Drivers’ Licenses was also viewed while we were in press on November 9th at the North Castle Public Library’s Whippoorwill Hall. “Since it was in Armonk where I raised my family, I viewed this as a homecoming in a way,” explains Salko. It also coincided with the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht and the fifth anniversary of when Salko first traveled to Lichtenfels.

“You can’t hold today’s generation responsible for what their ancestors did,” said Salko. “I talk about reconciliation a lot – meeting these students and what they did for our family was a gift. They helped fill in our family’s puzzle.”

Prior to her trip, Salko did not consider herself an activist. But she believes the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA in 2017 and the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh 10 days before her trip to Germany propelled her to speak out against antisemitism. These events coupled with the fact that there is no nationwide mandate for Holocaust education were catalysts for her dedicating herself to Holocaust education.

“I will tell this story to whoever will listen to me. We live in a world where words of hatred have become commonplace and accepted. It was words of hatred that ignited the Holocaust. As we get further removed from it, as the survivor community continues to diminish in numbers and antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion is on the rise, we must stand up, speak out, and most importantly tell survivor stories so this never happens again.”

“This high school project from a small Bavarian town in Germany is now used by educators as a teaching tool worldwide,” she says proudly, thanks to her presentation at Yad Vashem and her unwavering commitment to sharing the 13 Driver’s Licenses story.

The Mount Kisco Child Care Center – A Home Away from Home ‘Nurturing the Whole Family’

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PHOTO BY CAROLYN SIMPSON

One of the most fraught moments of being a parent is entrusting the care of your precious child to someone else. A visit to the Mount Kisco Child Care Center (“the center”), which I fell in love with on my recent visit, can put any reluctant parent’s mind at ease, should they be lucky enough to make it off the long waitlist to enroll.

From the moment you walk into the center, you feel the warmth in this “home away from home.” Peeking into the infant rooms, where babies range in age from three months to 18 months, I can’t help but feel joy and giggle in response to several little ones who look and smile my way.

“It’s a beautiful thing to see the smiley babies every day,” says Executive Director Dawn Meyerski. “If I’m frustrated with work, all I need to do is spend an hour in the preschool and I remember why I do this.”

“It’s a lot of fun to work here,” says Victoria Rivera, infant supervisor, and head teacher. “I get to snuggle all the babies and it’s amazing to see the connection we make with each family and the difference we make, working as a team with the parents.”

In the toddler program, for those 18 months to three-years-old, the focus is on language acquisition, self-help skills, social skills, and, of course, potty training. Meyerski estimates that in the center’s history, they must have potty trained close to 7000 children.

The programs are designed with intention and thoughtfulness. For example, in the preschool classrooms, the three, four, and five-year-olds are purposefully combined so that their activities are geared towards where they are developmentally versus chronologically. So, if a three-year-old is ready for more advanced activities, they can pursue them, but if a four-year-old isn’t ready, they are not embarrassed since everyone in the class is doing different things.

The directors and teachers work together to support the children and families when needed.  A social worker on staff helps families navigate more complex resource needs for special developmental services or subsidy reimbursements, as well as things like the death of a pet, a parent loses a job or becomes sick, really anything that the family encounters.

The belief at the center is that for the child to succeed, the whole family needs to be supported. The before and after school programs provide a true safety net for working parents, letting parents feel secure that their child has a place to go after school while they are at work, even when school lets out early for a snow day. For vacations, the center offers full day programming so parents can work. In the summer, they provide full day summer camp programming, including martial arts, swimming, field trips, and more.

Throughout the pandemic, the center stayed open, easing the burden for many working parents while their school age children completed remote learning at the center. “We had 40 kids from seven different school districts using all different learning platforms. Those after-school teachers were incredibly adaptive…

“We made it happen,” says Meyerski.

At MKCCC’s ‘Feed Me Fresh’ gala: Executive Director Dawn Meyerski with a 2023 honoree: Selamawit Wieland-Tesfaye, owner of Mimi’s Coffee House.

Feed Me Fresh

One of the biggest reasons people choose the center is the food services. Mostly everything is prepared on site in the kitchen and they try to use as little processed food as possible.

In addition to feeding the kids, the center encourages the children to understand where their food comes from with their signature Feed Me Fresh program, a comprehensive garden-to-table nutrition education curriculum. All the classrooms have their own raised bed gardens where they plant and harvest the same food the kitchen uses to make their lunches. The center combines gardening teaching units with cooking classes and related activities. If they are harvesting zucchini, they will come in and make zucchini boats. Later, when zucchini shows up on the lunch menu, they recognize it and are far more willing to eat it.

“One of my favorite gardens that we plant is the three sisters garden,” says Meyerski. “The school age kids plant corn, the toddlers plant squash, and the preschoolers plant green beans. They are companion crops that grow better together than they do apart. We use this to talk about the importance of working together. I love it because it’s symbolic of who we are and how we support each other.”

When the kids are on the playgrounds, they walk right past and pick snap peas off garden beds and eat them. In a display of pride and ownership, they independently check on the status of their growing vegetables.

“What I love best about it,” says Meyerski, “in a world where you can have anything you want in thirty seconds, where instant gratification is so real, you cannot make a carrot grow any faster than a carrot grows. They have to slow down and nurture it.”

Funding the Center

About half of the enrolled children pay the full tuition to attend the center. Tuition for the infant program runs nearly $2500 per month. The actual cost of care for infants and toddlers exceeds the tuition charged, but charging a higher rate would price out most families. The other half of the children are on scholarship, based on their family income. The center works with the Department of Social Services for some subsidies, but the bulk of their funding comes from donations. The center runs as a nonprofit and raises funds to support the children. It is their critical fundraising efforts that allow them to offer quality childcare to middle and low-income earning families, providing peace of mind to working parents.

Naturally, one of their biggest fundraising campaigns, the annual Feed Me Fresh gala, incorporates the center’s focus on fresh food. This year’s event took place at Ivanna Farm on September 23rd. This event started 19 years ago with incredible support from local restaurants who donate an evening of delicious, fresh, and inventive food. “Despite the rain this year, everyone showed up!” reported Paula Backer, the center’s Director of Development. All the restaurants, our sponsors and all our amazing supporters, came out despite the weather. We really felt the love of the community coming together around us in support of our families and what we do. It was beautiful and the food from our restaurant supporters was the best ever!”

courtesy of MKCCC

Meaningful Lessons to Remember

Despite their newest challenge of finding enough qualified teachers in the current labor shortage post pandemic, the center provides amazing programming.

A good teacher knows that kids learn best when they learn about things that are meaningful to them, so the staff at the center strives to create memorable lessons. If the kids are eating pizza for lunch, they will follow up with a walk down to the local pizza parlor for a social studies lesson about their community. Upon their return to the center, they will set up a pizza parlor and sell slices for a dollar apiece and learn about fractions as they cut the pie. As they make the menu, they learn their letters, and when they make the pizza and learn how to make cheese melt, they learn about science. Something as simple as pizza can prompt multiple learning opportunities.

This year, the center is collaborating with the STEM Alliance to bring in STEM programming for the preschool classes. The center is very grateful for a grant received due to the support of New York State Assemblyman Chris Burdick for in-house STEM training for the center’s teachers for next year.

Meyerski hopes to bring back their cherished intergenerational programming, in which senior citizens from My Second Home, a senior living provider, used to rent space at the center and interact several times a day with the children in organized activities. The program has not resumed after it was paused for safety reasons during the pandemic.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN SIMPSON

Extended Family

“MKCCC is a special place and I consider the adults who work there extended family,” says parent Stacey Cafaldo. “My daughter lost her confidence at another center and from the moment she started at MKCCC they made her feel strong and assertive. They reignited her love for learning and brought out the absolute best in her. Their unconditional assurance and support helps each kid develop into the best version of themselves possible.”

“It’s like a family here,” says toddler supervisor and head teacher Vanessa Kardos, who has worked at the center 21 years. “My first group of children are walking across the stage graduating college right now – seeing them become these amazing, mature and wonderful adults coming back as volunteers sometimes makes me so proud that I laid that foundation for them. Between the family feeling here and having so much fun with 2-year-olds all day and the love we get from them when we walk into a classroom, it makes you forget anything negative in the world. You’re giving so much love and getting so much love all day long.” For more information about the center, please visit mkccc.org.

Greening Briarcliff is the Environmental Advisory Council’s Mission

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Amy Karpati, Ph.D., chair, Briarcliff Environmental Advisory Council (EAC)
PHOTOS BY DONNA MUELLER

Briarcliff Manor is getting more green. And more purple, yellow, and orange too.

The village recently planted a variety of pollinator plants, such as purple cone-flowered echinacea, black-eyed Susans, and orange-flowered milkweed to attract butterflies, in the area outside the Briarcliff Village Hall.

The plants “attract pollinators and they’re good for the environment,” said Dr. Amy Karpati, chair of the new Briarcliff Environmental Advisory Council (EAC). *The EAC was established by the village in Fall, 2022, succeeding the horticulture committee, with the mission of preserving and planting trees and indigenous flora in the central business district, in town parks and on walkways, walking trails and green spaces, and educating residents on garden cultivation, sustainable landscaping and pest control.

Working with the EAC, the village planted 30 to 35 native trees in parks and around the village’s youth center on Lu Van Lu Road and will determine where to plant new trees in the so-called “Tree Streets” neighborhood (including Oak, Maple, and Larch roads), to mitigate the potential for flooding.

“We need more trees to help with stormwater control and to help stabilize soils. Several tributaries of the Pocantico River run through Briarcliff and they can flood. Pocantico River goes through Jackson Road Park and the neighborhood bordering it.”

Possible tree species that could be planted include Swamp White Oak and River Birch, Karpati said.

These are trees “that can grow in areas that are intermittently wet and dry. There’s a general acknowledgement that we need more trees. The village asks us what species (of tree) we’d recommend,” she explained. “We’re collaborating with the village on future tree planting projects, providing guidance and recommendations on which species to plant and where to plant them.”

Karpati is an adjunct professor in the graduate sustainability management program at Columbia University. She earned a PhD in ecology and evolution from Rutgers.

“Briarcliff has a renewed interest in sustainability,” Karpati pointed out. “What I would love to see happen is to make Briarcliff a model of suburban sustainability,” she said, where the village makes “green spaces that are connected and walkable and bike-able. Briarcliff can remodel the streetscape and make it climate-resilient.”

In an email, Karpati described her vision in more detail: “I think it is important for the EAC – and the village – to really think outside of the box and think about what is possible regarding nature and natural resources in our community. We can bring nature into the places we live and work. In this way, we can have a two-pronged approach to conservation and sustainability, in which we, one, protect the existing forests, natural areas and green spaces and two, enhance biodiversity and ecosystem function within our built environment, reconciling our needs with the needs of other species, even in business districts and downtown streetscapes. We can protect what we already have and also create more nature. This would mean thinking about green infrastructure and nature-based solutions: green roofs, vegetated stormwater swales, street trees, rain gardens, pollinator gardens, etc.”

Another area of the EAC’s focus will be sustainable landscaping.

“We advocate for reducing the area of your lawn in favor of wildflower meadow habitat,” Karpati said. “We hope to provide more training in 2024 on how to get rid of grass, how to put in plants that are good for wildflower meadows, and how to make your yard more eco-friendly and sustainable. The blatant use of pesticides contributes to the decline in birds, bees, and moths,” she explained.

Native wildflowers and native grasses have roots that penetrate deep into the soil, which means they are more able to reach water sources. This makes them more drought resistant than turf grass, such as Kentucky blue grass, which has shallow roots. Turf grass needs more water and is susceptible to drying out.

“Lawns have so much potential for nature conservation,” she said.

One of the critical issues with current lawn care practices is the disposal of leaf litter every autumn. Firefly, butterfly, and moth larvae bury themselves in leaf litter, Karpati said. When homeowners gather up and throw away their leaf litter, they’re also throwing out the larvae. That’s how these species disappear from your lawn.

Moths and butterflies are important pollinator species. Concerning fireflies, “they have significant ecological and cultural value,” Karpati wrote in an email. “Ecologically, they are beneficial insects, as the larvae are voracious predators that gobble up snails and slugs, benefiting gardens and agricultural lands. Culturally, they are emblematic of childhood summers. Their twinkling bioluminescence is a source of wonder for kids and adults and connects us to the nature around us.

“They can be good ambassadors for suburban conservation, as their populations have been in decline, and it would be quite a shame to lose them from our neighborhoods,” she stated.

Karpati grew up on Long Island and frequently went on camping trips with her family, which helped her develop a connection with nature early in her childhood. She has worked as a director of science and programs at the Teatown Lake Reservation in Ossining and a conservation biologist and environmental advocate in the New Jersey Pinelands.

At Columbia, she teaches how to create sustainable environments in urban areas, building green infrastructure in cities and enhancing biodiversity. She explained the presence of pigeons in cities, a question many walkers face every day as they make their way through New York City.

“The reason why they (pigeons) thrive is that tall buildings mimic the steep rock cliff sides that are their native habitats,” she said.

“I’m fascinated with how nature works. It’s cool to research how species adapt to their urban environments and how to bring ecosystem management back into disturbed landscapes.”

*Briarcliff Environmental Advisory Council: Dr. Amy Karpati, Brooke Beebe, Ernie DeMarie, Steven Kavee and Dawn Orza

Making a Difference, Brightening Someone’s Day: Do Something’s Zoe Harris

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The Do Something Club at Byram Hills High School undertakes simple projects to make a substantial difference. Started last year by Zoe Harris, a current junior at Byram, the club has already conducted numerous campaigns that spread smiles, increase climate awareness, connect the school community, and more. The club is part of the national organization, DoSomething.org, that is committed to “fueling young people to change the world.”

Zoe’s involvement with Do Something began in middle school when she was homebound due to a mystery illness. She was suddenly unable to walk unassisted, sleep, or partake in almost any normal activities, but rather than allowing this to remove her from the communities around her, it inspired her to get involved. “Even though she could do ‘nothing,’ she still wanted to do something,” shared Zoe’s mom, Heather Harris. And thus, she found the organization Do Something. “Do Something allowed me to help others without needing to walk and helped me connect with my community when it felt impossible to do so,” says Zoe.

Zoe held her first Do Something campaign, “Jeans for Teens,” in seventh grade, where she collected jeans to donate to teens in homeless shelters. Before she knew it, she had collected almost 500 pairs of jeans. After being home and feeling disconnected for so long, Zoe was able to help herself by helping others. Amidst COVID, the importance of helping those around us became even more apparent, and Zoe continued her involvement, “excited to be feeling part of something,” shared Heather. When she was in eighth grade, she collected toiletries and created bags to deliver to people living in transitional shelters. She started small, asking neighbors and family members for any extra products they had in their homes and ended with around 250 bags for donation; small steps led to a big difference.

A Club ‘Accessible to Everyone’

After seeing the impact she could have through Do Something, Zoe was determined to incorporate the organization into her high school. Last year, she began the club alongside Ms. DeRosa as club advisor. Ms. DeRosa teaches students with learning differences, and Zoe was determined to make the club accessible to everyone: “I approached Ms. DeRosa about starting the club because I felt this club would allow her students to help others like it had helped me when I was unable to walk. She agreed and the rest is history,” said Zoe. Heather also explained that Zoe “wanted to work with this particular population of students to show that we can all make a difference. Every single one of us can make a difference.” By helping others, the kids in the club are able to feel more confident, connect with their community, and value themselves as changemakers.

The club’s campaigns address a variety of social issues with a large focus on mental health. Last year, through the campaign “Bubble Break,” they created bubble bags for children in homeless shelters to teach them how to use breathing as a tool to help with anxiety. They held the “Mirror Message” campaign during the weeks of finals, APs, and regents, leaving inspirational notes on all of the mirrors in school bathrooms. “It’s the littlest things, but they have an impact,” says club advisor Ms. DeRosa. Zoe was touched when she “even heard someone say that they really needed to see that because they were having a bad day.”

Many of the club’s projects are also environmentally focused. Last year they held an “Unplug It” campaign to teach about energy waste. They hung up sticky notes around the school with facts about how much energy is wasted by leaving unused appliances plugged in. Ms. DeRosa noted that this seemingly small initiative sparked conversations and habit changes around the school as teachers in the faculty lounge shared that they now unplugged their coffee pots and toasters each morning!

The Do Something Club at Byram Hills High School shows each and every student that they can brighten someone’s day, make a real difference in their local communities, and, ultimately, change the world.