Sophie first became aware of Friends In Deed through her grandmother – FID Board Secretary Debby Singer! So when it came time to do her Bat Mitzvah project, she chose to do a sock drive for our Street Outreach and Housing team, knowing that clean dry socks are a wonderful gift to people on the street. She has also represented FID at her temple – the photo shows her working the FID table at a new member event at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center.
Since then, Sophie has continued her connection with FID. She is a senior in high school, is applying for college, and also volunteers at Huntington Hospital – and all that doesn’t leave her a lot of time! But she makes it work by volunteering remotely. Every week Sophie helps out the office by doing some electronic filing, and she works with our Eviction Prevention and Rental Assistance team by going through the hundreds of emails, voicemails, and form responses received by that team and logging them so they can be followed up. This frees up valuable time for our EPRA staff to work with the clients directly.
We are tremendously grateful to Sophie. Lots of people enjoy volunteering in the Food Pantry or The Women’s Room, where they are face to face with the clients and enjoy a strong sense of camaraderie. That sense of being part of a team is much harder to come by when doing remote administrative work – although Sophie says that she does find it very rewarding to see our clients move through the eviction prevention system and get help. We feel that Sophie is a very special person for contributing in this way, and we will miss her desperately when she goes to college!