Can jumping rope help survivors of genocide and mass atrocities? It can when the Hirschhorn sisters get involved! Following in the footsteps of her older sister Michelle, Ariella Hirschhorn is reviving the fundraiser that Michelle started in 2006 as a “Jump for Darfur.” Ariella’s jump-a thon, called “Jump-4-Syrian-Children”, takes place on June 10, 2018, as a fundraiser preceding Ariella’s Bat Mitzvah.
Ariella’s message is simple and direct:
“My name is Ariella Hirschhorn and I am 12 years old. I found out about a terrible war going on in Syria that is hurting kids our age. A lot of kids need medical help, but hospitals can’t get supplies. It made me really sad and I wanted to do something about it.
So how can we kids help? I am trying to get a lot of kids together to raise money while having fun. So, I created Jump-4-Syrian-Children, where boys and girls of all ages will jump rope together. And we will ask our family and friends to sponsor our jumping.”
Ariella reached out to both Jewish World Watch, and its partner, Save the Syrian Children, to take advantage of the “guerilla humanitarian aid” techniques to deliver life-saving medical aid to the hardest hit areas of the Syrian conflict, where most larger aid organizations cannot go.
These large organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and the Red Crescent, have been denied permission to operate officially within Syria by its President Assad who is preventing aid from reaching areas where he is proactively bombing. Save the Syrian Children is more nimble, using shipping routes and networks of doctors working on the ground in Idlib and Aleppo to deliver medical supplies and equipment from the port of Mersin, Turkey, to hospital where the need is the greatest.
How many jumps can change the world? We don’t know for sure, but the first Hirschhorn jump-a-thon raised more than $30, 000 over its multi-year existence. Ariella’s event is open to the public, but registration is required. To register or for more information: www.jump4syrianchildren.org.
Jump-4-Syrian-Children will be held at Temple Beth Am, 1039 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, on Sunday June 10th from 10am to Noon.