In the First Person: Tikkun Olam in South Africa: Inspired by Temple Upbringing To Build Homes, Fight Poverty

Raised in Washington, I have been a member of this congregation for the last 13 years. While it is not hard to see where I get my love for traveling abroad and experiencing new cultures, the path that has led me to work in the townships around Cape Town, South Africa, has been far from predictable.

But before I get into my journeys in South Africa, the non-governmental organization I helped to create, the baseball program I am developing, and how all of this is both directly and indirectly related to the experiences I have had at Temple Micah, allow me to briefly introduce myself. My name is Robert Rosenbaum. I was in the Temple Micah bar mitzvah class of '98, the Maret School class of '03, and the Colby College class of '07, which puts me, by my last count, at 23 years old. I studied history at Colby--choosing this major because it seemed interesting (and more legitimate somehow than the other social science degrees I was considering), but without any real idea of what I wanted to do after graduation.

I have played baseball my whole life, including at Colby, and until 2005, when I spent my fall semester studying at the University of Cape Town, I considered baseball to be without a doubt my biggest passion in life. (Rabbi Zemel's baseball references were the main reason I was willing to sit through an entire sermon as a kid.)

I always knew I wanted to study abroad, and when the time came to choose the place, I picked Cape Town for the same reasons that have made it such a popular destination among students: it is beautiful, it offers the opportunity to discover a new culture that is less western than many other places and the residents speak English.

My initial decision to volunteer at a children's home was primarily driven by my desire to see and to experience the reality of life for the majority of South Africans, a far cry from the relative comfort of my dormitory.

Cape Town is truly where the first and third worlds collide. In the course of a 10-minute drive, you can go from an area of deeply impoverished slums, with thousands of shacks lined up next to each other, to a white sand beach with mansions overlooking the sea. I started visiting one

of the townships, Khayelitsha, located about 12 miles outside of the city and home to more than 1 million people, to work at the Baphumelele Children's Home. It was there that I rediscovered the spark inside of me that by and large had remained dormant since my bar mitzvah.

I remembered the amazing feeling I had had while working on my mitzvah project at the soup kitchen my nursery school teacher helps to run. I started to question why, both at the time and since, I considered that involvement to be enough. The more times I went to the children's home, the more often I wanted to go, to the point where I realized that this was why I came to South Africa.

It was also at Baphumelele that I met a girl named Dianna. She is the real reason I am back in South Africa now, three years later, and no, it is not what you are thinking. Dianna is another American who was both volunteering at Baphumelele and interning at a nutrition center in Khayelitsha. Through an outreach program at the nutrition center, she came across a family of three--they had just lost their 18-month-old daughter--living in desperation. Dianna started to raise money to help them.

Through small donations from our group of volunteers, we raised about $100, and decided to see if we could go even farther: raise enough money to build them a new home. I e-mailed friends and family and the overwhelming majority of responses went something like this: "It sounds like this is a great project, but I am just broke. How does $20 sound?"

Well, $20 sounded pretty darn good. When we added the donations up, we had raised slightly more than $1,000, more than enough to build a new home, which cost only $600. I developed a close relationship with the people at the nutrition center and they agreed to keep the remaining money earmarked for this family. The file in their office was labeled "Rob's Family Fund."

Dianna and I got to thinking about how rewarding this experience had been, and how relatively easy it was for us to make it happen. We decided to pursue the idea of developing a non-governmental organization, or NGO, dedicated to improving the lives of the people of Khayelitsha and the surrounding townships. I returned to Colby and began raising money for the organization, which is now called the Philani Family Fund (named after the Philani Nutrition Center, under the auspices of which we still work). Since we started our NGO we have been able to help 12 families by building new homes, enrolling their children in school and establishing sponsorships that will enable them to get themselves out of poverty.

I moved back to Cape Town after finishing school and I have been running this organization from the ground ever since. I also have been coaching a baseball team in another township, Philippi, and I am developing the baseball club into a youth development organization. I do not know how long I will be here or what my long-term career will be. But I do know that for the time being, I have found my calling, and I believe it is intimately linked to the religious foundation I received at Temple Micah.