Yanir Nulman was beyond excited two months ago when his white purebred English Labrador, Mia, gave birth to a litter of nine healthy, playful puppies.
Perhaps less predictably, the 12-year-old immediately set about figuring out how to work them into his ongoing philanthropy project. The result: purchasing a canine companion from Yanir will benefit the Israel Children’s Centers, the largest social service organization for underprivileged and special needs children in Israel, with 14 different centers scattered across the country. The organization also works in conjunction with Israel Tennis Centers, the largest tennis school in the world.
As a component of his mitzvah project, Yanir has pledged to donate all proceeds from selling the puppies to the nonprofit centers, which provide underprivileged children with sports education and academic development regardless of their ethnic and religious background.
For Yanir, who’s currently studying for his bar mitzvah along with managing his duties as a seventh-grader at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, the concept of philanthropy wasn’t exactly a new one.
“Being raised in a Jewish home, and in a Jewish school, I’ve always been taught about tikkun olam,” Yanir says.
His parents, Avelyn Welczer and Jaim Nulman, have been supportive of Yanir’s efforts from day one, while Hausner’s Avodah L’Olam program encourages students to research issues of importance to them, volunteer at nonprofits and become involved in their communities as social activists.
Yanir also drew inspiration from his older sister, Linor, who raised $10,000 for Larger Than Life, an Israeli organization that seeks to improve the quality of life for children with cancer, by selling jams and other products as part of her mitzvah project a few years ago. Yanir says helping her raise funds — and eventually attending the nonprofit’s gala in Los Angeles — showed him how rewarding helping others could be.
When it came time to pick out an organization for his own work to benefit, it wasn’t hard to pick a direction. “I love tennis, and I play it every week,” Yanir explains. “So I wanted to do something connected to that.”
The Israel Children’s Centers have pioneered programs such as Jewish/Arab mixed doubles — pairing a Jewish child with an Arab child for regular practice — with the idea that if children from different backgrounds can play together, they might live together in peace as adults.
“That part’s really important to me, that they help all different kinds of children,” Yanir says. “There are Jews, Arabs, Druze, Ethiopian kids … it’s especially important to be open to everyone, I think, as Israel’s neighbors and many other countries around the world attack Israel’s position. They don’t see the good, the support given to all its residents.”
Though the puppies aren’t quite old enough to be adopted (they’ll be ready to take home saturday, March 5), Yanir already has had several interested parties come to see them.
“Some people have come to look at the puppies and when they saw it was me [they’d been communicating with via e-mail], they said, ‘This is you behind all this?’ ” Yanir says with a laugh. “Not a lot of people expect that I’m this young, doing this kind of project.”
Yanir has also built on his sister’s success with jam sales — he and his mother and sister make it from scratch using plums, peaches and other fruits from their backyard, and Yanir has been selling it at events for several months.
But the puppy project is even closer to his heart. He hopes to raise $8,000 overall.
“I’m doing it because I care about children,” Yanir explains. “I want to do something to help the world, and I’d like these children to lead a life where they can do anything they want to do.”
For more information about Israel Children’s Centers, visit www.israelchildren.org. For information about the puppies, visit web.me.com/jaimn/Mitzvah_Puppies.