News from Kol Ami

Yom Kippur Food Drive

Please bring non-perishable food items and cans with you to our Kol Nidre, or Yom Kippur services, and place them in the Vaughan Food Bank bins in the foyer of the shul. Every week, the Vaughan Food bank feeds the escalating number of working poor and impoverished families in our community. More than ever, families and individuals struggle to keep a roof over their heads and have enough left over for food. Homeless souls live in the City of Vaughan fields and many children tragically go to school hungry. We can help!

Volunteer with Jewish Immigration Aid Services

There is an incredible Kol Ami volunteer opportunity to help resettling Yazidi refugees in the GTA. The photograph on the right was taken in Toronto on Thursday August 3^rd, 2017 at a vigil outside of the US Consulate, to remember the Yazidi’s and their ongoing enslavement, torture, and death at the hands of ISIS. Many are holding up photos of their loved ones who have been murdered, and photos of missing daughters and sisters who have been sold into sexual slavery by ISIS.

Kol Ami now has a wonderful opportunity to help Yazidi refugees get settled into their new lives in the GTA. Many of us know first-hand, and from our parents and other family members, what it is like to be a traumatized refugee and a survivor of unbearable genocide, starting out life again in a new land, a new language and new culture. It’s a daunting task.

Volunteer opportunities for Kol Ami are extremely diverse, from greeting the refugees at the airport, to helping them get established in every way possible here, including assisting in finding more permanent accommodation. Unlike other refugees who come to Canada, our Government only provides 2 weeks of accommodation for the Yazidis. We will need to help them learn how to grocery shop, get their OHIP card, open a bank account, how to enroll their kids in school, how to take the TTC, etc. If you have an old cellphone you don’t need, then please consider donating it.

Please contact Marleine at 905-763-1136 or marleine@rogers.com for the full list of volunteer opportunities. Let’s form a strong team of compassionate, helping hands as soon as possible.

It doesn’t matter how little or how much you can help, because every moment

spent helping these tragic people is a mitzvah beyond word.

“How wonderful it is that no one need wait a single moment to start to improve the world”

- Anne Frank

Because we are Kol Ami and together we CAN make a difference