Getting into the holiday spirit proves easy for the members of the Jewish Volunteer Connection.
“It?s a day that we don?t celebrate, but a wonderful day to give back in some way,” said JVC executive director Leslie Pomerantz. “We saw that last year with our great response.”
JVC, a program of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, works to identify volunteer opportunities for individuals and groups.
The event, which began last year, saw about 400 people. Pomerantz is expecting the same number this year, if not more. “We saw such an enormous response last year that we decided to expand the event,” she said.
“Our role is to find meaningful ways to volunteer,” Pomerantz said. “We started to get a lot of calls around Thanksgiving and Christmastime. It?s a time when people felt they wanted to do something meaningful. We realized that we could help even more by creating our own community-wide effort to reach out.”
This year, the volunteers will be meeting at the Park Heights Jewish Community Center to put together more than 1,000 winter survival bags for the homeless and hand-delivering them.
People will also be volunteering at various community facilities like Our Daily Bread and nursing homes.
From noon to 4 p.m., the Rosenbloom Owings Mills Jewish Community Center will host Roll Into The J, a day full of family activities. “We?re encouraging the people who have been volunteering to come hang out with us,” said Rami Spiegal, director of children and teen services at the center.
“We?re going to be turning our gym into a skating rink, we?ll have a moon bounce and inflatables for younger kids, as well as arts and crafts projects.”
DJ Mike will be spinning tunes, and relay races will be held in the pool.
The center will also be showing a family-friendly movie in its teen lounge.
“We always do something on Christmas Day,” said Spiegal, who has gotten several calls about the event. “We hope that it will become a tradition.”
If you go
Jewish Volunteer Connection meets at:
» Venue: Park Heights Jewish Community Center, 5700 Park Heights Ave., Baltimore
» Time: 9:30 a.m.
» More info: 410-299-5437
» Venue: Rosenbloom Owings Mills JCC, 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills
» Time: Noon to 4 p.m.
» Cost: $18 for non-JCC members, free for JCC members
» More info: 410-356-5200
