Long time New Yorkers Arlene and Milt Berkman moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2009 in search of a slower, kinder and gentler pace. However, they found that issues like bullying were still present – even in a place like Charlotte. The couple, long-time JCF fund holders, decided to found a non-profit they named The Foundation for Respect Ability (http://foundationforrespectability.org/), whose mission is to empower people to address bullying in all its forms by converting “bystanders” into “upstanders” – people who speak up when acts of cruelty occur in their presence. Through music, they teach students in grades K-12 about tolerance, values and understanding.
JCF: What inspired you to start this organization?
Arlene Berkman: My son was bullied in school when he was in junior high, about 13-14 years old. To this day, he won’t talk about it. So when we moved to Charlotte and we saw other kids dealing with issues our son had dealt with, we wanted to find a way to teach kids character – understanding, tolerance and empathy.
JCF: As a funder, how did you transform this wonderful idea into a reality?
AB: At the time, the local Hebrew School had a new principal, Sid Krupkin, who made a lot of changes for the better. The kids respected him. He was musically inclined and had a wonderful voice. We approached him and said, “What can we do to teach kids manners?” We were talking about kids from good families. In December 2012, I hosted a dinner in my house with the Hebrew School principal and Diane Benson, the head of a local theatre group, who had just moved from Connecticut. I presented my idea for the organization. By the end of dinner, everyone was on board. It fell into place so easily.
JCF: Tell us about the organization’s successes to date.
AB: We started by doing an Anti- Bullying concert open to the public. The interest from there led us to do introductory workshops for teachers, counselors and principals and administrators. Religious leaders and organization heads as well as people in jobs dealing with a myriad of children’s behavior issues attended our introductory workshops.
School counselors were calling us asking for help in their schools and that led to full-day teacher training programs in social emotional learning and character building. Using educational resources provided to us by our friends at Operation Respect, we were on our way. This year, we are in three schools in Charlotte. In each school, we have an educator on site one day a week, every week. Our programming is not hit or miss – it’s a commitment on the part of the school, from the students to the teachers to the principals. Sid, our music director, provides character educational programming in the classroom. For example, each K-12 classroom writes its own song about bullying. There is also a literacy program in which children talk about characters in different books and identify targets of bullying and upstanders who speak out against such behavior. We also provide a lot of educational programming for other schools in the Charlotte area. In less than two years, we have reached more than 3,000 students directly and another 500 students indirectly.
JCF: How do you measure success?
AB: Great question. We hand out surveys to the students at the beginning of the year asking questions like “Have you ever been bullied?” and “How safe do you feel in school?” We hand out the same survey at the end of the year, and have been pleased by the results. The work we are doing changes the school climate. When the school environment is friendly, inviting and comfortable, children will learn more, come to school more often, and be happier.
JCF: You talk a lot about transforming students from “bystanders” into “upstanders.” What exactly do you mean by that?
AB: An upstander is a bystander who has been taught to say to a bully, “we don’t do that here.” Once the audience goes away, the aggression neutralizes and the bullying ends. Often, when parents and teachers get involved, it escalates a situation.
JCF: How has having a fund at Jewish Communal Fund helped you to support this important cause of yours?
AB and MB: We’ve had a fund at JCF for over 10 years. Our estate attorney originally recommended that we open a donor advised fund. The beauty of JCF is that you can make a contribution and take a tax deduction when you need it, and not have to rush into decisions about which charities to fund. It gives you a chance to think about what change you want to see in the world, and how best to allocate your charitable funds. When we came up with the idea for this organization, we felt assured that we had the funding in place to get it started.
JCF: What other charitable causes are you involved with?
AB and MB: We’re involved in our alma maters. We also support PBS – TV is a wasteland without them. We were also very active in supporting the building of the Greenburgh Hebrew Center in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester, where we lived for many years. Camp Care, a camp in Connecticut for neurologically impaired children, has earned our support for the great work they do.
If you would like to be featured in an upcoming “Meet a Fellow JCF Fund Holder” blog post, or you know someone who you think we should interview, please email Tamar at [email protected].