(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with a long time friend that's been with of us many times, Dr. Idana Goldberg, Chief Executive Officer of the Russell Berrie Foundation, a long time underwriter of our Making a Difference series.

Idana, good to see you, my friend.

- Good to see you too, Steve.

- We're gonna put up the website for the Russell Berrie Foundation.

I've been honored to also disclose for 29 years I have been emceeing these Making A Difference Awards.

The 30th year, next year will be the sunset year, the last year this has done.

Tell folks what these awards are, why they are, and why they're so darn important.

Please Idana.

- Sure.

So the making a Difference Awards are a way to recognize everyday heroes across the state of New Jersey.

The founder of our foundation, Russell Berrie, understood that people taking initiative, people seeing a problem and doing something to address it, is the foundation of kind of a good society.

And he, together with his wife, Angelica, initiated these awards, as you said, almost 30 years ago.

And every year they continue to impress upon us all how individuals across the entire state can see something, do something, and then make a difference.

And I think, especially now, when we see so much around us that looks like it's unraveling, so much polarization and toxicity, being able to recognize each year this group of heroes is a place of inspiration.

- Just to some of the top awardees, if you don't mind.

- Sure.

- I don't know if I can just share.

Adelaide's Place, Sister Patricia Pendergast of Atlantic City.

Adelaide's Place provides daytime relief healthcare and social services for homeless women.

You Are More Than Inc. Ashante Taylorcox organization supports the LGBT, survivors of exploitation and commercial sex trafficking with trauma informed mental healthcare, education, support and financial tools.

- And I would, I'll jump in just to say that- - Please.

- I think what's so special about Ashante is that she founded this organization specifically for survivors of color and that she saw that there was no organization that addressed those particular needs.

And now she's in, you know, dozens of states across the country, not just here in New Jersey meeting those particular needs.

Such an impressive young woman.

- By the way, our website will come up right now.

Go back and look at a series of interviews we've done with so many Making a Difference awardees and over the years.

I'm put you on the spot.

How many, we have, when I was hosting the event, I had the numbers.

- Is it?

- Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

It's close to 400.

- 400.

It's been 29 years worth of awardees and over $4 million that we've been able to award to these winners.

Really incredible.

- I'm sorry for interrupting.

Many of the people who started not-for-profit organizations helping people in the community, many of these people started organizations in part based on their own struggles, their own challenges, experiences in their lives.

And they choose, quote, chose not to be.

They choose and chose not to be victims, but rather to make a difference for others.

Is that a fair assessment Idana?

- Absolutely, I think if so many people, Pino Rodrigo, who in his own life- - Down in Camden.

- Right down in Camden, started the neighborhood association when his own children were not allowed to visit him because of the state of his neighborhood.

And he started to clean it up and to beautify it and brought others into that.

This year's one of this year's winners Nyene, who himself had been incarcerated, who when he came out, started a intervention program for teens at risk and through assertive technology lens to try to keep them from having, had to go through what he went through.

And there were so many of them who took their own struggles and rose above them.

- We're gonna put up the website again for the Russell Berrie Foundation.

Please go on the site.

Look at some of the video there.

The video team at the foundation has done a great job telling just a snippet, a small part of a powerful story for each one of the winners.

Let's shift gears, if you will.

Antisemitism on the rise.

Your involvement, your engagement and causes connected to the Jewish community to Israel.

Talk about that and why that is so important for you, for the foundation, especially now, Dr. Goldberg.

- Sure.

So Russell Berrie himself was a committed Jew for whom Israel was really important.

And building a thriving Jewish community was important.

And it was important for him to feel that Jews were protected.

You know, as someone who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, there was something that was present for him and for many of our trustees.

We've been investing in a strong, resilient, inclusive, and democratic Israel for more than 20 years.

How to bring marginalized populations into society, how to strengthen the democratic framework.

And we've been investing in a strong and inclusive and vibrant community, especially here in northern New Jersey.

But after October 7th, really for so many of us was such a wake up call.

And it was a wake up call in two different ways.

One obviously was just sort of this resurgence of antisemitism that we saw around us on our college campuses.

Unfortunately, in our community, I just saw a statistic that hate crimes in Bergen County are up at a sort of an inordinate amount.

But it was also a wake up call for many Jews who sort of woke up and said, wait, it's really important to us to be part of a Jewish community.

And so the foundation's work has been on both of those prongs on thinking about how do we invest in education programs so that our schools aren't inadvertently, I'll say, promoting sort of biased or anti-Semitic ideas about the Jewish people or Israel.

And also making sure that there are opportunities for the Jewish community to feel proud to be part of the Jewish community, to understand what it means to be Jewish in this day and age.

I'll give you one example.

- Please.

- In Northern New Jersey, we invested in something called the Jewish Student Union.

That's which are clubs that exist in public schools.

They're run for public school students.

They're not religious clubs, they're kind of ethnic clubs to identify, for students who identify as Jewish.

And students in public schools in Northern New Jersey all of a sudden said, wait, we feel alone.

And so we have been supporting now, they doubled since October 7th, I think almost 16, 17 clubs in these schools where kids can with a faculty advisor, talk about what, what does being Jewish mean?

What does Israel mean for them?

And in fact, we're now doubling down on that because we understand the importance of leadership, even for teens.

And we're gonna be helping the Jewish Student Union build a cohort of Berrie ambassadors of 25 or so exceptional students who are gonna go deeper onto a journey.

So that's the opportunity to say, right, how do you, you know, it's not enough to sort of know you're Jewish, but how do you understand what that means, what that means to you?

- So the foundation, the Russell Berrie Foundation doing important work, not only recognizing those who are making a difference every day, people who are really unsung heroes, but supporting the Jewish community continuing, and by the way, when I, we were at the event this year, the 29th of 29 years we were doing this.

Our great friend MaDame was there who was a Holocaust survivor.

And every year when I go there and I see her there, it reminds me that we have important work to do to continue to help people understand what the Holocaust was and why it matters and why it still matters.

So in that spirit, Idana Goldberg, Dr. Idana Goldberg, who's chief executive officer of the Russell Berrie Foundation, thank you to your team for bringing us together every year and celebrating people doing good things.

Could you imagine that?

Thank you Idana, appreciate it.

- Sure.

Thank you, Steve, for having me and for continuing to be such an important part of our Making A Difference Awards for so many years, - My honor.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

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