In a busy art studio in Jerusalem, teenagers are firing glass beads, stringing jewelry, painting ornamental hamsas and heating glass sheets that will become serving dishes, bowls and seder plates. The teens are both the employees and the beneficiaries of the social-purpose business where they work: Susan’s House, a craft workshop and store that employs at-risk youth.
“They start cutting glass and making glass beads,” said Avital Goel, the general manager of Susan’s House in Jerusalem. “They throw it out and say it’s terrible. But then outsiders come through and say it’s beautiful. … For the first time in their life, they get an experience of success.”
Susan’s House, which has a second location in Eilat, is a cross between a social service program and a business. The Jerusalem location employs about 60 teens a year; they are referred to the program by social workers or parole officers, Goel said. In 2013, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Impact Grant Initiative selected Susan’s House as a grant recipient.
“These folks have been wandering the streets,” said Barak Loozon, the director of the federation’s Israel and global network and head of its Israel office in Kfar Saba. “It brings value to their lives. We see very good results.”
The federation’s Impact Grant Initiative is designed to engage Bay Area professionals with Israeli social ventures. In 2013, the federation brought its first delegation of Bay Area community leaders to Israel to tour organizations that had applied for the grant and select which to invest in. Susan’s House was chosen as one of the first three programs to receive a grant and zero-interest loan totaling $68,000 and two years of business mentoring. The grant package is made in partnership with the Israel Venture Network, an organization with branches in Palo Alto and Israel that helps Israeli nonprofits and social businesses become financially sustainable. “We’ve built a whole kind of a package to each one of these ventures,” Loozon said. “Susan’s House had a need of promoting their marketing and sales and building their showroom.”
Susan’s House was the dream of Susan Kaplansky, the late wife of Goel’s best friend, Eyal. Though Kaplansky was not able to start an art endeavor for at-risk kids in her lifetime, after the mother of four died from cancer in 2001 at the age of 38, her husband raised funds to establish Susan’s House in her memory. He asked Goel, at the time a secular tai chi practitioner living in Tel Aviv, to run the organization.
More than a decade later, a now ultra-Orthodox Goel sports a full beard and has supervised and encouraged hundreds of youth who have passed through the program. Most come from troubled families with histories of physical, emotional or substance abuse; many were living on the street or facing legal trouble when they found their way to Susan’s House.
Goel tells success stories proudly. One girl joined the program at age 16; her father was in jail and her 28-year-old boyfriend was a controlling drug dealer. At Susan’s House, she made beautiful glass beads that attracted admiration. As her self-esteem grew, she decided to leave her boyfriend and was eventually accepted into the army, where she received an award of excellence earlier this year. Goel said her first night in the army, the other girls in her unit cried of homesickness.
“She cheered them up,” Goel said, telling them, “‘I don’t miss my home.’ She discovered the strength she has.”
Susan’s House receives government funding for providing programming for at-risk youth. But its partnership with the S.F.-based federation has been focused on helping it develop revenue streams and become more economically sustainable. For instance, Lily Kanter, a Mill Valley entrepreneur who was a member of the Impact Grant Initiative delegation, helped Susan’s House develop a showroom where visitors to Israel can learn about the program and shop for the crafts made by the teenagers.
“What we try to do is to change the role of Israel in Jewish life in the Bay Area,” explained Loozon. “It’s no longer the ‘poor nephew’ we need to donate to, but a more significant partnership and relationship.”