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Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester

An Appetite for Generosity

March 8, 2019 by Sabra Staudenmaier

(L-R): (914) Cares 4th Annual Empty Bowls Committee, Dana Berk, Jodi Falbaum, Lisa Samkoff, Melissa Levine, Jillian Pohly, Jessica Reinmann, Mike Slomsky, Dawn Greenberg, Lena Cavanna, Doug Alpuche and Lauren Stern

(914) Cares Fourth Annual Empty Bowls Event Raises $120,000 to Fight Hunger in Westchester

On the cold Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, a warmth radiated from Crabtree’s Kittle House Restaurant and Inn. The smell of hearty food filled the air. A simple meal of soup, bread and hors d’oeuvres was being prepared in the kitchen. An abstract sculpture stood inside the entrance of this quaint venue. It was made of ceramic bowls and cans of soup, layered in rows that progressively narrowed from bottom to top, forming a tree. The tree symbolized the upcoming holiday season. The bowls were individually and uniquely hand-painted by members of the community. They were all empty; a reminder that many cannot afford to fill their bowls. The guests of the evening were there to support the Empty Bowls Westchester annual fundraiser to help the fight against hunger.

Throughout the restaurant, soup and bread stations were set up alongside additional displays of painted bowls. Signs explaining the work being done to end hunger sat beside more of the painted bowls. The Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry displayed a sign saying, “We fed 41,791 people last year”. The Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester showed a sign informing, “We serve over 80,000 nutritious meals each year.” Hillside Food Outreach had a sign that shared, “We have over 300 volunteers that pack & deliver to our clients.”

Celebrities Help the Cause

Set aside from the main event, the Kittle House’s Tap room was lined with tables showcasing larger bowls that had been signed by celebrities who support this important cause. Celebrities who participated by donating signed bowls included Yankees legend Mariano Rivera, Bon Jovi’s Richie Sambora, author and activist Cecile Richards, US golfing great Tom Watson, Bill and Hillary Clinton, author James Patterson, HQ Trivia Host Scott Rogowsky and Pinkalicious children’s author Victoria Kahn. These “Celebrity Bowls” were an important part of the fundraising effort. They were available to bid on in the evening’s highly anticipated silent auction.

Empty Bowls Westchester is a division of (914) Cares–an organization that supports local Westchester based non-profits that focus on basic human needs: food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education. According to the Feeding Westchester (formerly known as the Westchester Food Bank), one in five residents of Westchester is food insecure, which means approximately 200,000 people are hungry or at risk for hunger. Each year, an Empty Bowls Committee is formed to run the local arm of the international grassroots effort to raise money and awareness in the fight to end hunger in our community.

Grant recipients (L-R): Kelly Housman, Mt. Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry; Susan Bretti, Community Center of Northern Westchester; Clare Murray, Community Center of Northern Westchester and Robin Karp, Pleasantville Interfaith Emergency Food Pantry

A Community Wide Effort

Beginning in the spring, (914) Cares Co-Founders Dawn Greenberg and Jessica Reinmann work with volunteers from the community who donate their time to hand paint bowls, one by one. Members from Congregation Sons of Israel Briarcliff, Pace University and Strauss Paper employees along with several Girl Scout troops are among those who helped paint bowls which, this year, totaled over 250. Once painted, A Maze in Pottery in Briarcliff Manor, a generous supporter of this cause, fires all the painted bowls in their kiln.

Local Grant Recipients Utilize Event’s Funds

Local organizations who are on the front lines in the fight against hunger apply to receive grants from the funds raised. This year six grant recipients were selected. These organizations were Bread of Life, The Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester, The Community Center of Northern Westchester, Hillside Food Outreach, The Interfaith Emergency Food Pantry of Pleasantville and The Mount Kisco Interfaith Food Pantry.

The recipients of this year’s grants were extremely appreciative for funding they received, but the community members who attended the fundraiser were just as thankful for the work the organizations do. Whether it’s through rescuing food so that it does not go to waste, delivering food to the sick or elderly, or running a food pantry year -round; through the grace of these organizations, the gap between those who are able to give and those who are in need is being bridged. The people who champion this cause maintain that they get more than they give from the work they do.

Ways to Get Involved

Empty Bowls Westchester and (914) Cares are always looking for the help of generous people. Whatever one can give is significant and makes a difference. Reinmann encourages the community to continue to support this cause by hosting a bowl painting party, becoming a sponsor or attending the next Empty Bowls Westchester event. Celebrity–signed bowls are always welcome donations for the silent auction portion of the fundraiser. There are many ways to get involved.

In Reinmann’s experience, people are very generous during the holiday season, but help often declines in January and February. The depth of winter, however, is when the need for help is the greatest. She encourages people to reach out to local food banks to find out what is needed and run a drive to raise those items accordingly.

The Empty Bowls event was a success but there is still much more work to be done. Since its inception, four years ago, Empty Bowls Westchester has raised almost half a million dollars. Greenberg and Reinmann aim to continue to support the growth of the program. They want to help create a community where basic fundamental needs are available to everyone. A place where poverty and hunger is not temporarily mended with a band aid but rather where the cycle of poverty is ended.

When the evening was over, every attendee received a hand-painted bowl to remind them of all the empty bowls in the world that still need to be filled and to inspire them to continue to support ending hunger. The ultimate goal, according to Reinmann, is “the day when (914) Cares is no longer needed, that will be the best day ever.”

For more information on how to support Empty Bowls Westchester, please visit 914cares.org

PHOTO BY SETH BERK

Some Really Super Bowls

Over the past four years, a number of very special bowls have been auctioned during the Empty Bowls silent auction. Artist in Residence and committee member, Melissa Levine, painted most of this year’s bowls that were sent to celebrities who volunteered to sign them to help raise money for this cause. A Maze in Pottery Briarcliff Manor’s Nancy Beard generously assisted by lending her artistic talent to paint some of the celebrity-signed bowls. For this year’s auction, comedian Jim Belushi did his own artwork on the bowl he signed and donated.

The bidding on celebrity bowls starts at $125 and bowls can go for any amount higher.  To date, the bowl that has gotten the highest bid was from last year’s silent auction.  It was a bowl signed by the entire Philadelphia Eagles football team and was won by a bid of $1,700.

Some celebrities, for example Bill and Hillary Clinton, are regular supporters, and have signed a bowl to be auctioned each year.

On occasion, a bowl will be sent to a celebrity for signing and the celebrity will return the bowl with an additional item to be included in the auction. Two years ago, musician James Taylor added a signed guitar to his donation. For this year’s auction, Richie Sambora donated a signed guitar along with his signed bowl.

PHOTO BY Sabra Staudenmaier

 

PHOTO COURTESY OF EMPTY BOWLS
PHOTO BY Sabra Staudenmaier

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: 914 Cares, Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester, Celebrities, Crabtree's Kittle House, Dawn Evans Greenberg, donations, empty bowls, Empty Bowls Westchester, Feeding Westchester, Fighting Hunger, hunger, Jessica Reinmann, Painted bowls, Sponsor Generosity, Volunteerism

Boys and Girls Club Gala Unveils Awareness Campaign Featuring Local Celebrities

June 9, 2018 by Inside Press

On Friday, June 1, 2018, the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester hosted its 24th Annual Humanitarian Awards Dinner, celebrating literacy and the arts.  It was a star-studded party with over 400 guests and attendees included Joseph Abboud, Paul & Cathy Shaffer, Sloan Wainwright and Vanessa Williams, to name a few.  The event honored Carolyn Quinn as the Humanitarian Award recipient and Peter Pucci as the John Beach Award recipient.


(L-R): BGCNW Board President and Curtis Instruments President & CEO Stuart Marwell, BGCNW CEO Alyzza Ozer, Peter Pucci (John Beach Award Recipient) and Carolyn Quinn (Humanitarian Award Recipient).

The gala was held at beautiful Birdstone Farm in Cross River, New York. Guests strolled through the charming stables and gathered outdoors to enjoy cocktails, appetizers and a bucolic vista.  It was an evening of amazing performances! The highlight of cocktail hour was a dance performed by Club kids, which they helped choreograph during a semester-long workshop with honoree Peter Pucci.  Later, the Club’s Cheer Squad brought the crowd to their feet with enthusiasm.

The Club’s President, Stuart Marwell, President & CEO of Curtis Instruments, unveiled a new Club awareness/volunteer campaign featuring Westchester-based celebrity/community leaders, such as Paul Shaffer, Joseph Abboud, Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Robert Klein, Sandra Lee, Alan Menken, Rob Thomas, the Wainwrights, Vanessa Williams, Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Many of these leaders enjoyed having their children learn to swim at the Club.

Following a career at the Windward School in White Plains, honoree Carolyn Quinn began her volunteer work at the Club as a literacy tutor.  She developed writing and reading workshops for kids at the Club and is a board member.  Carolyn emphasized that “an unfortunate reality is that by middle school, there is no time left in the curriculum to help kids improve their reading fluency, yet this skill is critical to their success in school.”  The literacy programming implemented by Carolyn at the Club is filling this gap.

(L-R): Jim Skrip, Vanessa Williams, BGCNW CEO Alyzza Ozer, Cathy Shaffer, Paul Shaffer and BGCNW President and Curtis Instruments President & CEO Stuart Marwell.

Honoree Peter Pucci, a Lucille Lortel Award winner and a Drama Desk Award recipient, recently brought his talents to the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester, sharing the joy of movement and choreography with Club kids.  Peter made a heartfelt plea for continued support of the arts in education, sharing “any time kids have stress or problems, the opportunity to participate in the arts helps them to focus and be more productive.”

Two areas of programming significantly expanded at the Club include College Quest and Civic Advocacy and Leadership.  The Club’s 2018 Youth of the Year, Stephanie Trejo, said, “I was a shy girl, afraid to speak up for myself, and now I am going to SUNY New Paltz this fall all because of the support I received at the Club, where for the last nine years, 100% of our seniors (including those designated at-risk) have gone on to college or technical school.”

About the BGCNW

Over 500 kids attend the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester in Mount Kisco daily, a safe place with committed teachers, mentors, tutors and volunteers.  Over 85,000 free, nutritious meals are served to the children in after school programs each year— 67% of whom live at or below the poverty level.  In addition, 50,000 kids have learned to be water-safe, while learning the benefits of physical fitness and good health.  For nine years running, 100% of the Club’s high school seniors, including those deemed at-risk, have graduated on time and gone on to college or technical school.

News Courtesy of the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester

(L-R): 2018 Youth of the Year Stephanie Trejo, 2018 Youth of the Year Finalist Eric Lopez Duarte, 2018 Chris Cutri Award Winner Evelyn Aguilar and 2018 Youth of the Year Finalist Braille Diaz
BGCNW Board Member Lee Manning-Vogelstein and Club Cheer Team members.

Filed Under: Inside Westchester Tagged With: Awareness Campaign, Boys and Girls Club, Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester, gala, Humanitarian Awards, Peter Pucci, star studded, Volunteer campaign

“Why Did They Have to Die?”

January 15, 2018 by Inside Press

Peter Somogyi, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and victim of Nazi experiments on twins, still grieves as he bears witness to the unimaginable.

Story and Photos by Grace Bennett

Mount Kisco–Peter Somogyi , a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, was 11-years-old when he and his twin brother Tamas were ‘selected’ and imprisoned as concentration camp victims and subject to the horrific ‘human experiments’ performed by the notorious Josef Mengele (“the Angel of Death”) and others. Somogyi, now 85 years old, said he would not talk about his imprisonment or experiences for decades.

But at the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester BGCNW on January 7, Somogyi, a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center for the last four years, relayed his memories to attendees.

Jason Fine, Peter Somogyi, Alyzza Ozer and Aaron Notis

Opening the program, Alyzza Ozer, BGCNW’s executive director, said that Somogyi’s talk was the Club’s first in a Civic Advocacy speaker series within ‘Youth for Unity,’ a program launched at BGCNW, which serves 500-800 kids a day, ages 3-18 (nationwide, some 4.2 to 4.3 million). The Club’s mission, she said, is to inspire and enable all youth to be best they can be and advocate on behalf of the community.

Introducing Somogyi were Aaron Notis and Jason Fine, Horace Greeley High School juniors who are volunteering with the HHREC to bring lectures about the Holocaust and genocide to wider audiences. They said they got involved due to a scourge of modern day anti-Semitism and bigotry. They noted that 900 hate incidents were reported across the U.S. in the 10 days following the 2016 election. Those attacks included vandals drawing swastikas on a synagogue, schools, cars and driveways. They pointed out the now infamous march of white supremacists in Charlottesville last October and their anti-Semitic chant. They also expressed concern over a growing, so called BDS movement that veers into anti-Semitism.

Finally, they cited reasons why people of every race and religion need to be aware of exactly what happened during the Holocaust. “In Germany in the 1930’s, the Nuremberg laws institutionalized the racial theories commonly held by Nazis. The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or getting involved with persons of “German or related blood.” Jews were stripped of their German citizenship. They could not own businesses or do business with non-Jews. Jewish children could no longer attend their schools. Jewish doctors could no longer treat non-Jews, and Jews could no longer go to non-Jewish doctors. And this was just the beginning of the prejudices and horrors that Jews encountered.”

 Somogyi’s Journey

 “Somogyi’s Journey” began on March 14, 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary. Within two weeks, he recalled the required wearing of yellow stars and people being beaten up on the streets. The Jews were pushed into a ghetto with families living in single rooms confused and beset with fear. Shortly after, roundups began for deportation. “We were told to take only what we can from the ghetto. They gave us some bread but no water whatsoever. It was chaos. Children were crying. All of us…we didn’t know what was happening. On arrival at Auschwitz, exhausted and terrified, anyone ‘able bodied’ was ordered to one side, he explained, and older people and children to the other. “Then along came Mengele asking for twins… they grabbed us. We never had a chance to say goodbye.”

He remembered that his sister Alice was “forced to undress naked” and led with others into a room that was “supposed to be a shower,” he said of the infamous gas chamber, the largest room of the crematorium at Auschwitz, in which hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, children and political prisoners perished. “No one knew that in ten minutes they would all be dead.,” said Somogyi. Some were lucky and died instantly.” He explained how “those who had climbed to the top of bodies in a kind of pyramid, took longer. Within ten minutes, they all died.”

While Alice and his mother Elizabeth and hundreds of others were murdered following that single ‘selection,’ those chosen to ‘work’ were forcibly ‘tattooed’ and told their new identities would be a number. Somoygi showed and recited his own: A74454455. Inside the barracks, the prisoners were assigned six to “a bed” made of tiers of wood planks. There, that night, he learned of his sister’s fate and of the genocide taking place. “We smelled the stench of burning bodies, the flames going up 10-15 feet out of the chimney. The persons who worked at the crematoriums were replaced every two to three months, and gassed themselves, so there would be no eyewitnesses.”

The so called ‘experiments’ began. Mengele was in fact one of dozens of ‘physicians’ participating in this torture. “They were taking blood all the time and measuring everything.” (A slide indicated the victims were injected with unknown substances; a second slide pointed to an experiment which intended to determine how long someone can survive without eating.) “I remember one dwarf (another segment of the population the Nazis targeted for experimentation) “got really, really sick. One morning I had a cold body next to me. Every day, there were six to ten people who died and they lined the bodies up like cinder sticks…”

Somogyi said that the twins considered their horrible situation ironically life saving (“although I hate to call it that,” he said) in that they were of some “use” and despite that the twins and others chosen to be experimented on lived in abject fear “wondering when Mengele would decide he didn’t need us anymore.” They knew that “any moment, any time, we could go to the gas chamber like the others.’  In addition, many of those subject to the experimentation died as a consequence of them; others were murdered in order to facilitate post-mortem examination, according to a document from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By January, 1945, the Nazis had already lost the war on many fronts. “On January 27, we saw our first Russian soldier,” Somogyi said. “Imagine an 11-year-old thinking, when is my time to die? And then, finally, I am free. You don’t know what kind of feeling that is.”  His brother Tamas survived as well. In time, he discovered that his father Izso had survived Dachau.

He described a journey back first to Budapest (he and Tamas were reunited with their father with a neighbor’s aid in Hungrary) and then to Israel (where he became an officer in the army), from where he left to England, and finally, to the United States.

Somogyi expressed his grief over lost family and friends, stating:  “Why did they have to die? We were persecuted only because we were Jewish.”

Many of the survivors, he explained, could not talk to anyone about what happened for a very long time. As a young man, “a blind date asked me about my number. I asked her never to ask me again.” 

Like many survivors, Somogyi found the inner strength to reinvent his life. He has been married for 56 years to Anna with two children and grandchildren. On one post-war trip in 1990 back to his hometown Pecs in Hungary, he said, “It felt so strange. And I was happy to get away.” “Today,” he offered, “there are people who say this never happened. In 10-15 years, there will be no survivors. I’m here to tell the world that it DID happen, and it’s very lucky I survived.”

At the end of his talk, Shantae Artis, BGCNW’s Community Volunteer Coordinator, commended Somogyi for his openness. “We need to bear witness,” she told the crowd who came out in single digit temperatures to hear him. “Empathy and compassion are tools we need to have to prevent future tragedies so that we never ever have to bear witness again like this.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bearing witness continues when the BGCNW on March 4th at 7 p.m. welcomes guest speaker Rita Kabali Wagener, a survivor under the regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Do mark your calendar.

Grace Bennett is publisher and editor in chief of the Inside Press, and the 2017 recipient of the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center’s Bernard Rosenshein ‘Courage to Care’ award. For more information and membership info about the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester, please visit bgcnw.com, and for same at the HHREC, please visit hhrecny.org.

Filed Under: New Castle News Tagged With: Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester, Civic Advocacy, HHREC Speaker's Bureau, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, Holocaust education, Josef Mengele, Nazi Twin Experiments, Youth for Unity

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