Gates Mills Students Form Majority of 2006 Saltzman Youth Panel

Seniors Winston Berkman, Adam Yasinow and Scott Yasinow, and Juniors Zachary Rosskamm, Hannah Whitehead, Adam Baratz, Yoni Binstock, Madeleine Bruml, Cari Meisel and Matthew Raskind are among 40 area youths who have been selected to serve on the Jewish Community Federation`s 2006 Saltzman Youth Panel. These Hawken students form the largest group of panel members selected from any single school. The panel was established through the Maurice Saltzman Youth Grant Program of the Jewish Federation, to educate younger members of the Jewish community about the importance of Jewish communal decision-making, the philanthropic process, and responding to Jewish and general community needs. Participants include Jewish students of different backgrounds, who are selected on the recommendations of youth group advisors, rabbis and religious school directors as well as from at-large applications. Panelists work together to allocate over $50,000 in grant monies toward the improvement of the Jewish and general communities. \"The panelists are divided into teams of two and three,\" details Winston Berkman, \"and each team is given a grant proposal to research and review. We travel as a panel to all of the sites submitting proposals, and share our findings. We then decide, as a group, how to distribute the $50,000 of grant money.\" The panel allocates grants of up to $7,500, and funds widely varied organizations, notes Berkman. \"In the past, the panel has funded everything from training JCC counselors to serve special-needs campers, to providing support for an impoverished Jewish community in St. Petersburg, Russia,\" he notes. Student panelists are fully in charge of the decision-making process, notes Zachary Rosskamm. \"We discuss how to recognize good proposals with an adult advisor, but no one has veto power over the panel`s decisions,\" says Rosskamm. \"We weigh the depth versus the breadth of each proposal; in one case we may choose a proposal that benefits five people at high level; in another we might fund a program that is less in-depth but reaches more people. Our job is to accomplish the greatest possible impact with the funds available to us.\"