All sorts of problems, one number to call

Issue of March 6, 2010/ 20 Adar 5770

After the death of her husband from cancer, the young widow was confronted with yet another catastrophe: bills were piling up, bills she couldn’t figure out. Her husband had always taken care of their finances. Fortunately, a new community organization provided her with a volunteer accountant.

The Achiezer Community Resource Center was launched two years ago as, “a clearing house where anyone in the community, when dealing with an unexpected or difficult crisis, and is not sure where to start,” can come for help, according to founder and Executive Director Rabbi Boruch B. Bender.

“People in crisis need more than a referral,” he emphasized. “We hold their hand and walk them through, step by step. We walk them through the entire issue and any issue that may pop up.”

“We do a lot more than just give them the phone number,” Bender explained.
Achiezer fields calls and assists families with medical and hospital-related issues as well as financial and emotional problems. The organization also works alongside the Eliezer Project to help people find employment.

In one instance a local man was left partially paralyzed and with other complications following a stroke. Achiezer recruited a top physician to help; “fought very hard” to get the man into a specialized rehabilitation center and negotiated with his insurance company to pay for it. The man needed specialized care and renovations to his home to make it wheelchair accessible that the family could not afford. Achiezer recruited two volunteers from their database, one to design the changes and the other to build the additions to the house, all pro-bono.

“When the patient, now wheelchair-ound, comes home, he will have access to his house,” said Bender. “He called for a doctor and got help with insurance, medical care and we redesigned his house.”

Bender said he founded Achiezer after being approached by community leaders, physicians, and rabbis. Many families in the community had dire needs but nowhere to turn. While some of the resources they required were available, navigating through the numerous organizations was a daunting task.

“We needed ... to bring them under one roof and that way help that many more people,” Bender said.

Bender was “born and bred” in Yeshiva Darchei Torah; the son of the rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Bender. He holds a bachelors degree in Talmudic Law from the yeshiva and taught in Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Brooklyn for the last three years. Running Achiezer has become his full-time job and he remains an active Hatzalah volunteer, as well, as he has for the last four years. It was that role that highlighted the need for an organization like Achiezer.

“I’ve seen situations where there is a need for acute medical care and there is a need to be able to pass someone over to some other care, to assist them to navigate the hospital system: find the right physician, the right procedure, the bikur cholim aspects, insurance issues, all the way down the pole. I found myself unofficially involved in a lot of those situations,” he said.

Bender runs Achiezer with the help of one full-time assistant from their new office near the ocean on Beach 9th Street and Seagirt Boulevard in Far Rockaway. They began on Central Avenue in Cedarhurst but a larger, lower-cost space was soon required. The location is accessible to the Five Towns and Far Rockaway and is “quieter, confidential, and more private,” he said.

The organization finds itself “forced to grow due to needs.” A social worker is to be hired to triage new cases and help determine the type of assistance that will be required. Another full time secretary will also be hired to handle the volume of calls.

Whenever possible, Achiezer works with community organizations.

“We don’t seek to reinvent the wheel,” he explained. “We utilize existing community resources where possible. In other situations we have to implement and strategize on our own. We are an organization that is there to dig in and make sure it gets done.”

Volunteers of all types, from doctors to plumbers, work with Achiezer. They are part of what Bender describes as the “chesed movement” in the community.

“They are so excited to give back to the community,” he explained. “They were all calling, saying, ‘we want to help.’ It allows us to help in that many more situations. It’s been tremendous.”

Achiezer is funded through donations. The 16 executive board members are, in Bender’s words, from “every corner of the community.” They are currently working with a grant writer to seek support from charitable foundations. The organization covers the Five Towns, West Hempstead, Oceanside, Long Beach, Atlantic Beach, Far Rockaway, Belle Harbor and the surrounding Long Island communities. Achiezer has helped outside the area, though its main focus remains inside those communities.

Achiezer Community Resource Center is at 148 Beach 9th Street, Suite 2C, Far Rockaway, NY 11691. The telephone number is (516) 791-4444 and is monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.