Securing the future for students
IMAGINE a future where every Jewish child has the opportunity of a Jewish school education, regardless of family finances.
IMAGINE a future where every Jewish child has the opportunity of a Jewish school education, regardless of family finances.
This is the dream of the Moriah College Foundation, which held its inaugural cocktail party earlier this month to thank major donors and to unveil its vision for the future of our youth.
“The aim of the foundation is to really address the issue of affordability of a Jewish day school education, and to make sure that our community really prioritises a day school education for the people who prioritise it for their families,” foundation president Judy Lowy told The AJN.
There are two main ways the foundation hopes to achieve this.
One is to “increase the pot” of funds available to families seeking fee assistance.
“We get some [funds] from our JCA allocation, but we really have so much more demand than we have in that allocation, and we desperately want to help more families,” Lowy said.
The other approach, Lowy explained, is to make fees more affordable in general in order to make the investment of a Jewish day school education more attractive to “the pool of people in the middle” who choose public schooling.
“The more kids that have a [Jewish] day school education the stronger the Sydney Jewish community will be,” she said.
The foundation’s first task – overseeing Moriah’s 2011 Capital Appeal, which raised $12 million towards the cost of purchasing the school’s Queens Park site – has already been a success.
The cocktail party held on August 14, at which high-profile businessman David Gonski was the keynote speaker, was held to thank inaugural foundation members – donors who had contributed $20,000 and above.
“Many of them have been big supporters of the college over many, many years,” Lowy said.
“But many young families stepped up at the Capital Appeal and really pushed themselves to enter because they thought that it was important.”
Lowy said it is also “a real dream of the foundation” to one day fund the school’s Israel Study Tour.
In the meantime, she said anyone in the community is welcome to contribute to the foundation.
“We’re appealing to people to think about us when drawing up their wills, we’re appealing to people to talk to us about remembering somebody by perhaps donating scholarships and bursaries,” Lowy said.
“We look forward to welcoming new members.”
For more information, contact Shelana Silver on (02) 93751600, ext 1774.
GARETH NARUNSKY
From left: Moriah Acting Principal John Hamey, Foundation president Judy Lowy, Foundation chairman Brian Schwartz and Board president Mark Schneider.
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