In an effort to facilitate and coordinate community service projects, seniors Abby Dugan, Rachel Eisenberg and Aliza Levine restarted M’AT, the school’s charity organization, after it faded out three years ago.

According to Eisenberg, M’AT is “a way for students to become more involved in their school community while also giving back to the larger community.”

While traditionally, minyanim do not coordinate their charity activities on a school wide basis, M’AT hopes to collect tzedakah from individual minyanim. This money will be donated to charities chosen by M’AT, along with any profit the Student Council has at the end of the year, according to Student Council co-president Rachel Lieber.

The Student Council agreed to this process because they felt confident in M’AT’s ability to choose a charity.

“Because M’AT consists of kids who have a passion for charity and helping others, I trust them better than I trust myself to pick,” Lieber said.

The charity organization hopes to provide service and money to N Street Village, which is a women’s shelter, monetary aid for La Coordinadora, an El Salvador-based organization that gives aid to farmers in need and to an Israeli charity that has not yet been selected, according to Eisenberg.

Dugan stressed that M’AT remains open to suggestions from student about other programs the group should help.

“The purpose of M’AT is to make students aware of projects as they come along,” said Dugan.

“It’s not necessarily that all of our projects are ongoing; we just take opportunities as they pop up.”

M’AT’s current community service projects include tutoring for elementary school students at the Emory Church in Washington, DC on Fridays.

The word M’AT, which means “little” in Hebrew, is an acronym for the three sections that the group intended to focus on when founded; mazon (bread), ezra (work) and teva (nature).

While the group has since changed its focus, the word still represents their philosophy.
Little by little, we’re doing what we can to help,” Dugan said.