By Michaela Fiederer
The Save a Child’s Heart Club (SACH) seeks to raise awareness for the Israel-based international nonprofit organization, Save a Child’s Heart. The group provides life-saving cardiac care to children across the globe. This year, the SACH club focused largely on fundraising, successfully raising over $2,000 in under 2 semesters. While fundraising is certainly a large priority for the SACH chapter at Stern, another goal is for students to feel connected to the hundreds of children who receive medical care from SACH each year.
This year’s final event was a creative, hands-on arts and crafts activity that took place on May 2, 2022 on the Beren campus. Students each got to make their own unique puppets, transforming ordinary socks into life-like creatures. Fun embellishments, such as ping-pong ball eyes, felt eyelids, and yarn hair, turned the simple socks into “Muppet-like” hand puppets.
The event had a great turnout and students were eager to channel their creativity in all sorts of ways. Elisheva Hirsch (SCW ‘23) expressed, “It is so amazing to have these opportunities to use your creativity and have fun while making something to help brighten a child’s day.” The event touched the hearts of so many students, and created a sense of personal connection between each member of the SACH chapter and the children of Save a Child’s Heart. Rivka Shavelson (SCW ‘23) describes her experience at the closing event and recalls, “the room was full of college students laughing and playing with puppets, and it was so easy to picture a smile on a young child’s face when he would receive his new toy.” It is the hope of the SACH chapter at Stern College that these puppets, which will be sent to Israel this summer, will help spread joy to children who are facing the most difficult trials of their lives.
The aim of our SACH chapter was to make a substantial donation to the Save a Child’s Heart organization in Israel, and to facilitate a desire to help the children and families who benefit from SACH’s tremendous services. As co-president of the SACH club, Shayna Vadnai (SCW 23’) explains, “SACH is an incredible organization, and we’re privileged to be able to both fundraise and directly impact the children.” Through our many events, we successfully reached our goal!