Meet the 10 GPM Entwine Summer 2017 Cohort participants

Meet the current GPM-Entwine summer 2017 cohort who are putting a lot of effort and love into their summer volunteering experience in Mumbai. Their different backgrounds, educations, and experiences have allowed each fellow to contribute in a unique manner to the program:

Here is a glimpse into the participants of the current GPM-JDC Entwine volunteer session:

Shoshana Balk

Shosh's passion for Jewish education and community building traces back to her Cincinnati, Ohio

roots, where she and her four sisters were known collectively as "the rabbi's daughters." She has been blessed to turn her passion into a career at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, where she teaches middle school Talmud and Tanach. Shosh graduated from Stern College, where she double majored in Psychology and Jewish Studies. Shosh's most formative experiences have mostly occurred during the summer - as a counselor at Camp Stone and on Counterpoint Israel, the head counselor on the Shaare Zedek Summer Interns Program, and Birthright Israel trip leader, to name a few. She thrives on maintaining creative outlets in her life, with an emphasis on writing and recording music, performing as an acappella singer, and playing piano and guitar.

Sapira Cahana

Sapira is the youngest of  five children. Born in Goteborg, Sweden to a Swedish father and a Texan mother, she spent most of her youth between Toronto and Montreal. Growing up in a rabbinic household, the door was always open to multi-faith travelers with Shabbat as the centerpiece. She has been a passionate disability rights advocate from the age of 4, when she began attending a school for children with special needs and has worked with people with disabilities in school, homes, day centers and camps ever since. She is currently studying Liberal Arts and Third World Studies at Marianopolis College in Montreal with professional aspirations of  going into diplomacy. She is a voracious reader, an avid film buff, a poetry enthusiast, enjoys playing the ukulele, and dancing contemporary dance.

Ezra Felder

Ezra grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Providence Hebrew Day School followed by

Yeshiva of Greater Washington. At YGW,  Ezra was heavily involved in the community, serving as a leader in the Bnei Akiva organization’s youth programming. During high school, Ezra also spent multiple summers volunteering in various communities in Israel, working with at risk youth, recent immigrants, and the elderly. A deep sense of  Zionism and responsibility to the Jewish people then brought him  to Israel, where he studied at Yeshivat Sha’alvim and subsequently served in the Israel Defense Forces as a sharp shooter in the Kfir Brigade. Upon his discharge from the army in 2016, he decided to return to America to pursue his academic career at Yeshiva University, where he is studying Psychology and Economics. When he is not studying, Ezra spends his time tutoring at a local public school, rehearsing for the school play, exploring New York City, reading, playing piano and hanging with friends.

Elianna Isaacs

Growing up, Elianna attended Jewish elementary and high school. She worked as a counselor at Morasha sleep away camp the summer after 11th  grade. The following summer, she worked as a counselor at an orthodox traveling camp called Kanfei Nesharim, through which she traveled to New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii. She graduated high school a year early and enrolled in Yeshiva University. Following that year, she did a gap year in Israel at a seminary. And during that year, she decided to join  the Israeli army. She has just finished her year and a half  of  service and is currently studying at Hunter College in New York, where she is hoping to become a nurse. Elianna's plan is to return to Israel and make aliyah after her studies.

Rebecca Kornhauser

Rebecca (Geffie) grew up in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania and graduated from Kohelet Yeshiva High

school. She currently attends Yeshiva University, where she is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature with a minor in Biology. Inspired by her small, but vibrant Jewish community, Geffie worked as a counselor at Camp Moshava after high school. Her upbringing also inspired a passion for social justice, which Geffie pursues through her volunteer work with various organizations, including Child Family Health International (CFHI). At  CFHI, Geffie learned traditional and modern medicine from local doctors in Uttarakhand, India, and immersed herself in the culture by living with a host family and attending daily yoga classes. Geffie is also passionate about increasing access to education for underrepresented populations. While studying abroad in Israel, Geffie taught English to Israeli teens from disadvantaged backgrounds and particularly enjoyed reading the imaginative stories that her students wrote. Geffie is currently a volunteer instructor for START  Science, a nonprofit STEM educational organization, where she facilitates science projects for fourth graders from underserved public schools in the Washington Heights neighborhood of  New York City.

Ian Piczenik

Ian recently worked as a Madrich at Yeshiva Darkaynu, a gap year program for boys with developmental disabilities in Israel, where he is pursuing his passion to help make a fundamental difference in the lives of those around him.  Ian loves to relax with friends and has a thriving sense of humor. He also loves to travel. Recently, Ian visited Morocco and has previously travelled across Europe. To further pursue this interest, Ian will be entering University College London in September to study Politics and Eastern European studies. Ian also loves to play sport. Throughout high school, Ian regularly played football with friends. He also raced nationally, culminating in him  running the Jerusalem marathon last year. He ran the marathon to raise money for the Israeli based charity Save a ChildsHeart, a cause very important to Ian and one he spent 3 months volunteering at last year during his first year in Israel.

Chaya Pollak

Chaya is a twenty four year old living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Bachelor's from

Touro College with a major in speech pathology and a minor in education. She took to continuing education classes in graphic design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and private lessons in fine art. Chaya volunteered at Camp Nageela Midwest was was started by NCSY, in Marshall, Indiana for four summers. There, she worked as an art director and counselor. She also volunteered at camp Simcha, a camp for children with cancer and other blood disorders.

Malka Schnaidman

Malka was born and bred  in New Jersey. She graduated from Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School at the age of  18 when she left home for Israel. Over the next two years, she continued to study Jewish Philosophy, Theology, and Talmud in an Israeli seminary. She then spent ten months performing national service for an Israeli non-profit that represents the widows and orphans of  the IDF. While there, she also taught music to underprivileged youth at a group home. Now back in the states, Malka is studying Anthropology, Arabic, and Philosophy at NYU. She continues to volunteer in her spare time; she teaches environmental sciences to children at underfunded New York public schools and tutors inmates at Riker's Island

Gabriella Shofet

A child of Jewish Iranian refugees, Gabriella's instilled sense of empathy and resilience has fostered

her passion for healthcare with an emphasis on public health. She has immersed herself in everything from regenerative retinal stem cell research at a world- renowned medical institution at age 17 and has recently interned in a single-roomed ER within an underserved and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish hospital in Israel. In honor of her great grandfather, she became involved in the Youth Movement Against Alzheimer's to raise education and research efforts within her generation. Gabriella currently studies Biopsychology with minors in French and Spanish at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There, she is involved with the Taubman Symposia Interfaith Dialogues surrounding Middle Eastern  topics. Her ambitions include further revealing the intersection between Judaism and science, volunteering in third world countries and underserved communities via a mastery of  languages, and learning how to pass level 836 of  Candy Crush.

Noadia Steinmetz-Silber 

Noadia concluded a year of study and service in Israel and will be attending the University of Chicago in the fall. She grew up in New York City  and spent four years living in Israel as a child. Throughout high school, Noadia spent time after school and on the weekends volunteering (tutoring children in inner-city schools and working with children with special needs). Alongside learning, Noadia spent five months this year working in the English department in a high school in southern Israel and teaching Bedouin women basic Hebrew  skills. Over the past several summers, Noadia split her time between interning in a variety of hospital settings and working with children with special needs, both in Israel and the United States. Noadia is interested in the interplay between human behavior on the individual and social level and plans to study the social sciences and law in college. Through her studies and volunteer experience, Noadia hopes to gain a more nuanced understanding of the human experience and become an advocate for social change.

Mindful India visits Gabriel Project Mumbai

By Dina Wyshogrod and Rachelle Oseran, Minful India

“I am special!  You are special!  We are all special!” roared the grinning children at the end of their yoga class.        

Now, had this just been an exercise in self-esteem for kids, that might have been enough, or, as is written in the Passover Hagaddah, dayenu. 

Meditation with Batia Hofstadter and the children of the Kalwa Slums

But here’s what was really special:   

Chanting right along with the little ones was a bunch of Israeli and Jewish tourists, participants in what has become an annual sightseeing adventure called Mindful India.  And all this was taking place right smack in the teeming slums of Mumbai, courtesy of an amazing program called GabrielProject Mumbai (GPM).

Mindful India is the creation of Dr. Dina Wyshogrod, clinical psychologist and mindfulness expert, and Rachelle Oseran, mindful birthing instructor and yoga teacher.  Since 2009, we have been bringing English-speaking Israelis and like-minded Jewish travelers from around the world to India for a unique experience combining sightseeing, mindfulness, and social action.  We aim for our participants to come away from our trips with indelible memories of India’s architectural and artistic beauty, its majestic panoramas, its spiritual richness, and the warmth and charm of its people.  And, in particular, we hope they will be as inspired as we are, by the growing number of initiatives seeking to propel India steadily forward into a future which guarantees all its citizens equal access to knowledge and education, economic and personal security, and equality and justice. 

This year, our search for just such a local empowerment project led us to the Gabriel Project Mumbai (GPM) in the heart of Mumbai’s Kalva district, and to its visionary leader, Jacob Sztokman.   Jacob was determined to do something for adults and kids whose lives, otherwise, are full of acute poverty-related challenges.  His vision of providing education, healthcare and nourishment for body, mind and soul to this most vulnerable sector of society dovetails with the spirit of mindfulness and the Jewish value of tikkun olam, repairing the world, spurring us to open our hearts and minds to the suffering of others in order to create a better world.   GPM, therefore, was a perfect match for the spirit of our Mindful India trip, and Jacob and his staff were most accommodating in setting up our visit. 

Walking to GPM was a jaw-dropping experience of making our way through acres of waste and debris of every description in every direction.  And while we’d known we’d be seeing some tough stuff, this beggared belief.  I actually hesitate to write these last sentences for fear of turning off some readers.  And that would be a shame, because our visit to Kalva and to GPM was anything but a turn-off.  In fact, it was a highlight of our visit to India. 

For in the midst of filth and poverty, we found an oasis of health, of care, of hope, of possibility.

We discovered the ShravanMedical Clinic, the first of its kind in the Kalva slum.  It services thousands of vulnerable children and their families through burgeoning inoculation programs, health care initiatives, and malnutrition prevention projects.  Sadly, the clinic is named in memory of Shravan Shah, a beautiful, bright, promising 11 year old boy who suddenly fell ill and died before proper diagnosis and treatment could be administered.  He had dreamed of being a doctor. Now his name graces the clinic that saves others’ lives.   

We learned about a cooking project that feeds kids what is often their only hot meal of the day, an enterprise that also empowers the cooks to develop their own catering projects for local events. 

We visited the Sundara SoapProject, an oasis of cleanliness and purity in the midst of that endless garbage dump.  Sundara means “beauty” and this beautiful empowerment project allows local women to build their own cottage industry by purifying and recycling used soap donated by area luxury hotels into new soap bars.  Some of these bars are given to the children along with instructions on hand washing and basic hygiene, teachings that they then can share with their families.  Other bars are processed into a slightly up-scale version with the addition of natural ingredients such as neem, turmeric and eucalyptus and sold to raise funds for the project.    

Deep breathing before a full day of learning

Whenever we visit programs such as GPM, we are on the lookout for how we can be personally involved in their mission in addition to donating funds.  Having learned about the Sundara project while preparing for our trip, we were inspired to collect our own partially used soap bars at each hotel we stayed at along the way and contribute our modest collection to their efforts.  It was a small gesture, to be sure, but it kept their mission uppermost in our minds throughout our travels and enhanced the connection we felt when we actually saw the project in action.  Bringing those recycled soaps home as souvenirs and sharing the story behind them with friends and family reminds us to appreciate the so-called simple things in life and not take anything for granted. 

Another highlight of the visit was meeting and interacting with the children in their classrooms.  We thrilled at their wide-eyed enthusiasm as they recited the days of the week in English, and were moved by the opportunity to teach and practice yoga with them.  It was particularly poignant that we, from the West, were bringing these powerful ancient Indian practices home to India’s own children, so that they might draw on them to bolster their inner resources and cope more effectively with the challenges they face.             

Each experience reinforced the realization of how interconnected we all are, that whenever you give, you also receive.  We came to the slums of Mumbai with the “notion” of the poverty of their existence.  Certainly nobody is downplaying that reality.  However, the kids and workers we met at GPM shared with us the richness of their smiles and the bounty of their optimism, that spark of hope and life that GPM is doing its utmost to fan into a blaze of glorious possibility.  As those little bodies swayed and teetered, finding their balance in “tree pose”, their skinny arms, soaring like branches toward the heavens reminded us that, with the right encouragement and resources, each one of us can indeed reach for the stars.    

So yes:  “I am special!”

   “You are special!”

   “We are all special!”

And:      “GPM:  You are indeed special!”

Dina Wyshogrod, PhD is a licensed clinical and medical psychologist, and Founder and Director of MBSR-ISRAEL, The Israeli Center for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.  A native New Yorker, Dina has lived in Jerusalem, Israel since 1991.

 

Rachelle Oseran is a Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) teacher, a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator and teacher trainer, and a certified yoga instructor. Originally from Zimbabwe, she has lived in Jerusalem, Israel, since 1976.

Together, Dina and Rachelle co-lead annual Mindful India trips (www.mindfultours.net).

A Bat Mitzvah in the slums of Mumbai

Naama Teitel, the 12-year old daughter of Gabriel Project Mumbai(GPM) Board member Gladys Delman Teitel and her husband Greg, decided to dedicate her Bat Mitzvah to the children in the slums of India. In December 2016, Naama and her parents traveled from their home in Connecticut to India. Together, they explored their maternal family roots in the Bene Israel Indian Jewish community and came to Mumbai and volunteered with children in the Kalwa slum through the programs of GPM. Naama taught classes and prepared classroom educational materials for the kids in GPM's Love2Learn classes. She also raised over $2600 for the GPM vaccination program in the Shravan Health Center. “I think that it is very important for children to receive vaccinations because it prevents diseases or even death from occurring,” she wrote on her fundraising page. Her mother, Gladys, wrote about the trip: “It was a life changing experience on so many levels.”

Before leaving for Mumbai, Naama taught her class in the Bi-Cultural Day School (BCDS) in Stamford, CT how to dance the “Macarena”, and she videotaped the group doing the dance. One of the fun activities she did in Kalwa was to teach the kids how to dance the Macarena as well. The video of the two classes – one in Stamford and one in Kalwa – doing the Macarena can be seen here on the GPM YouTube channel. Naama's class at BCDS also created posters about life in Stamford with all their names on them. When Naama came to Kalwa, the children presented her with posters that they

prepared about life in Kalwa with their names on it. The children traded posters as part of a young cultural exchange, and spent time learning about one another. The posters now hang in classes in Stamford and in Kalwa.

This is the second time that the Teitel family decided to celebrate a child’s bat mitzvah with the GPM family in Kalwa. Three years ago, Gladys and Greg travelled with their oldest daughter, Sophie to India, to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, explore their Bene Israel roots and to spend time in the slums. "The Teitel family visit exemplifies the values of mutual respect and global connectivity that we try so hard to instill with our work,” said GPM Founding Director Jacob Sztokman. “I am so honored and awed by the vision of Gladys, Greg, Naama, Sophie and the whole family. They have enormous hearts and are a model of giving and care that we should all emulate.”

From slums to sandcastles

"I’m very lucky to work for two fantastic organisations here in Mumbai. I am currently completing a fellowship with Gabriel Project Mumbai (GPM) and the Indian branch of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). In particular, GPM works in under-served rural villages and urban slums in the state of Maharastra. We focus primarily on education, health and nutrition programmes. By addressing these three areas, we can change lives and give someone the ability to make choices about their own life. A privilege many of us don't even recognise we have.

Another privilege that was once pointed out to me, during my time in Ghana with Tzedek, is travel and movement. Throughout most of our lives we will, at some point, visit somewhere outside of our own neighbourhood. However, for many of the children GPM works with this is not the case. Their experience of the world is almost entirely limited to life in Kalwa slum. Despite Kalwa being no more than 30 minutes from one of the world’s largest cities, Mumbai, almost none of the children from the slums will have been to see it. They will never have been to a park, museum or even a library.

To do something about this, the JDC works with GPM to create the JDC GPM Internship programme. This programme empowers young Jews form the local community to run weekly ‘Sunday Fundays’ for the children GPM works with in Kalwa. Volunteers plan educational and fun sessions that take place all over Mumbai. They could visit the science museum, aquarium, or an art gallery, maybe the gardens in Malabar Hill or, like this week, go to the beach.

Dressed up and super ready for the day, 21 kids, aged 5-12 years old, excitedly waved and shouted hello at us from the bus as it pulled up by Chowpatty beach in south Mumbai. As they got off we were greeted with high fives, smiles and shouts of “hi teacher!”. I’m not sure I can do justice to the look of excited happiness on their faces as we walked/ran/climbed the walls towards the entrance. However, as we reached the edge of the beach, the group at the front, abruptly stopped. Unsure, they looked to each other and then collectively took a leap of faith. They had never seen or felt sand before. These kids had never been to a beach before. This initial trepidation was quickly forgotten as the playground came into sight. There are no real open spaces in Kalwa slum, especially not ones with playground equipment, or without rubbish.

The volunteers from the internship spent time teaching the kids about different sports; cricket, basketball, football, hockey, etc. We then played relay races and running games. Everyone was shouting, cheering and laughing - volunteers, teachers and kids, together.

After lunch where, obviously, popards and gulab jamum were in the highest demand, we started going down to the sea. A small group of four held Maayan and my hands as we walked down to the edge of the water. Along the way Maayan explained, in Hindi, that this was the sea, and not a river or lake like you have in Kalwa. Understandably, Nikita, who was holding my hand very tightly as we approached, was a little intimidated by the sea and putting her feet in the water. So, the volunteers dipped our toes in the water and soon everyone followed. As the water washed over their feet there was a collective laughing, giggling, shriek of pure joy. After all the kids had gone to the sea, we returned back to the group only to be greeted with a very loud and enthusiastic request to go to the sea again!

Watching these amazing, beautiful, inquisitive children discovering the beach for the first time was just wonderful. It often feels like, in Mumbai, a positive only exists as a result of a stark contrast to a negative. But this Sunday, for a few hours, that was not the case at all. They were just kids at the beach, playing, laughing and having fun.

I feel so blessed to work with organisations and people that make these experiences possible, and that I was included. How special that for one morning our only job is to bring happiness, new experience and opportunity to these children. The smiles on the kids’ faces at the end of the day is testament to what can be achieved with little money, but a lot of time, care and effort from dedicated, hard-working people."

Lucy Cohen,
JDC JSC Pears Fellow 2017
GPM Volunteer Coordinator and Development Project Manager

At the Sanjay Gandhi National Park

by Nissim Pingle director of the JCC, Mumbai India

"It was an early start to our day as we set out for the Sanjay Gandhi National Park one of the oldest heritage points, located in Borivali; a great choice by GPM-JDC intern Ruby Ezekiel. After breakfast the children took a ride around the park on the Mini Train also locally called the “Van Rani” meaning the 'Jungle Queen'. The kids then spent time playing the Song game “Antakshari”, and later enjoyed themselves by playing on the slides and swings. Next the children gathered together for sessions on hygiene and cleanliness where they learnt the right technique of washing hands and also tried it out themselves using the soaps and tissue papers that were provided to them. It was a lovely lunch experience as the children sat down on benches with trees shading their heads and a beautiful lake by their side. To complete the meal the kids were also given ice candies.

The second half of the program was high up in the Kanheri caves located at the heart of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. These caves date back to the 1st Century BCE (more than 2000 years old), and are home to massive Buddhist stone sculptures. A wonderful hilltop view of the jungle and a troop of monkeys jumping over trees was a treat to their eyes. And watching the kids laugh with joy and clap to the monkey moves was the best gift a GPM-JDC volunteer can get. After a short tour around the caves they children left for home. We also gave them 2 soap packets each and a packet of berries to nibble on during their journey back to the Kalwa slum."

GPM Welcomes Subhash L. Mahale as Educational Field Officer for the Love2Learn Program

Subhash Mahale

Mr. Subhash L. Mahale has joined the GPM team as Educational Field Officer for the GPM Love2Learn Program in the village of Ashte in Dahanu Taluka in the Palghar district in Maharashtra, India.

Mr. Mahale, a 31-year-old father of two who holds a BA in humanities as well as a Teaching Diploma, was born and raised in Ashte village. A member of the progressive Konkana tribe, he is passionate about education and social change, and is a veteran community organizer. He has been a program coordinator on issues of women’s empowerment, health care, and children’s education, He has many interests, from sports like Kabbadi, Kho Kho, or Cricket, to dancing the Gauri Dance or Adivasi Tarpa dance typical tribal folk dances of the area.

“We are thrilled to have Subhash on our team,” said Kenneth Dsouza, GPM Director in India. “His

Subhash and a village class

wealth of experience, combined with his deep knowledge of the region and connections with the people, make him a wonderful asset to the organization. I am sure that with his help, we will continue to make significant development inroads improving the lives of the families and children in the area.”

Mr. Mahale’s duties will include:  Daily supervision of the Love2Learn classes and the Ashte English Pre-school in all aspects of education, nutrition and health care;  Implementation of the ASHTEgreen12 farmers program; Welcoming visitors, volunteers, donors and well-wishers; Organizing events such as Love2Learn Annual Day, Farmer’s meetings, Surveys for the English Nursery Pre-school; and Liaising with local educational authorities, government officials and health officers.

GPM offers a warm welcome to Subhash as he joins the GPM India family!

Don't be afraid, come back to school!

Its been two months since Gabriel Project Mumbai (GPM) teachers first stepped into the village of Pasodipeda and frightened all the children. The children were so frightened that they ran to the nearby forest and hid.

Its not that GPM teachers were acting scary or that they were wearing terrifying outfits that frightened the children. The children ran away because they were not used to seeing strangers in their village. You see, Pasodipeda is a remote tribal village located in an even more isolated and secluded area than the 20 villages where GPM has been doing development work for the last two years. The village is so cut-off from the world around it that the children, aged 8-12 were not accustomed to seeing strangers in their village.

The teachers arrived at the behest of the Modgaon Regional Government Educational Officer. The government official heard about the GPM Love2Learn program in the area and asked GPM to consider running the Pasodipeda local government school as the current teacher was unable to continue. Seasoned GPM teacher, Anil Mahala was excited to tackle this challenge and travelled the forty minutes through winding dirt roads to Pasodipeda. Anil is exceptional in the area as he earned a Diploma of Education and he has taken over the village school as principal and teacher.

So back in the forest, parents gently convinced their children to return to classroom (“don’t be afraid, come back to school”) and gradually introduced Anil to the children.  Slowly, Anil won the hearts of

Anil and one of the classrooms at Pasodipeda

the children and the GPM-run school in the Pasodipeda village has been running with full attendance for the last month.

Learning outside can be a lot of fun

This is an exciting development for Gabriel Project Mumbai. Working closely within government educational structures, being appreciated for the innovative teaching methods and being recognized as a strong valued partner in the region is an important part of creating effective and long-lasting grassroots community development in under-served communities.

We wish Anil a lot of success in providing the children of Pasodipeda with years of fruitful and exciting learning while receiving good nutrition and quality healthcare – hallmark elements of GPM’s Love2Learn initiative.

GPM Launches the Dr. Gerald J. Friedman Infant Malnutrition Intervention Program in the Slums of Mumbai

Gabriel Project Mumbai is thrilled to announce the launch of the Dr. Gerald J. Friedman Infant Malnutrition Intervention Program in the slums of Mumbai. The program will provide emergency nutritional intervention to save the lives of 300 malnourished children per year who are under the age of five.

The program is named in memory of Dr. Gerald J. Friedman, a New York-based physician who practiced medicine for over 55 years and specialized in diabetes, cardiology and internal medicine. During World War II, Dr. Friedman served as a young army doctor in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific and was struck by how severe malnourishment affects the growth and development of children.

The Dr. Gerald J. Friedman Infant Malnutrition Intervention Program was made possible thanks to the generous support of The Estelle Friedman Gervis Family Foundation, an organization named after Dr. Friedman’s beloved sister, Estelle. The Foundation's support is in the form of the largest single donation that GPM has ever received. The Foundation provides support services for needy children, including children in orphanages, those with physical illnesses or disabilities, developmental delays, or in stressful life situations.

“Both my uncle and my mother would have been very proud to support the Gabriel Project Mumbai program so that we may assist children in living full and productive lives with their families,” says Foundation President, Barbara Gervis, Estelle’s daughter.

The malnutrition program will take place at the Shravan Health Center in the Bhaskar Nagar slum neighborhood. The clinic was opened by GPM in August 2015 in partnership with the local NGO Doctors for You. The center provides a full range of medical services, primarily to children and mothers. These efforts enable this 200,000-member community to receive accessible, affordable, quality health care.

The malnutrition program was conceived by the doctors in the clinic, who were concerned about high incidences of malnutrition among their patients. This is a harrowing problem in the slums. According to the World Bank, the prevalence of malnourished children in India is among the highest in the world, and has dire consequences for the children. Malnourished children have more infectious diseases, such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, experience stunted physical and mental development and have higher mortality rates than children who receive proper nourishment.

The Dr. Gerald J. Friedman Infant Malnutrition Intervention Program will be using the universally acclaimed Integrated Child Development Program (ICDP) protocol to treat severely malnourished children.Through this program, which is advocated by WHO, the UN, and other emergency relief organizations, children undergo weight and height checks, upper arm circumference measurements and other physical and cognitive development measures, in order to diagnose the severity of their malnutrition.

The Center doctors will then treat the children with a three-month comprehensive nutrition program that helps kick-start the child's physical and cognitive development. The children receive nutritional supplements in the form of Hyderabad Mix and Ezee Paste. These are powerful protein-based food treatments specifically designed to treat malnourished children. In addition, parents in the Malnutrition ICDP program are provided intensive nutritional counselling in order to help families emerge from dangerous cycles of malnutrition.

“There are currently 300 children who have been identified as being malnourished and were waiting to receive treatment,” says GPM Founding Director Jacob Sztokman. “The Dr. Gerald J. Friedman Infant Malnutrition Intervention Program will be a godsend for them and for their parents, and enable the children to stave off life-threatening hunger. We welcome the Foundation's significant and multiyear commitment to ensuring the future of these children and trusting GPM to provide impactful vital programs like this one. ”