OUR COMMUNITY
COURTESY OF JILL SHERMAN-MARX
A Helping Holiday
LEFT: Oliver and Alice Hybl and Emeri Charlip are proud of the rocks they collected, designed and decorated. BOTTOM: Emeri Charlip delivered the money to the food bank and was given a tour.
Hillel student and friends decorated rocks to raise money for food bank while on vacation. DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER
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holiday vacation taken by a West Bloomfield family in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, turned into a vehicle to help those in need. Ten-year-old Hillel student Emeri Charlip, along with her two friends, Oliver and Alice Hybl, raised more than $400 for the Vallarta Food Bank by collecting, decorating and selling rocks. It began when the kids decided to do an art project when they were on the beach one day, and Jill Sherman-Marx, Emeri’s mother, asked if they were interested in making it into a fundraiser to benefit someone. The kids were thrilled at the idea. That morning, Sherman-Marx gathered art supplies to decorate the rocks with and a table for
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them to sell the rocks. “They got busy — boy, did they get busy,” Sherman-Marx said. “They took it very seriously.” Sherman-Marx was familiar with the Vallarta Food Bank after having traveled to Puerto Vallarta for more than 20 years. She knows how crucial it’s been during the pandemic. “It was so incredibly touching to me how one man started this operation in Vallarta and, at the height of the pandemic, they were feeding a ridiculous amount of people, like 800 people. It was crazy,” she said. The rocks were sold on a “give-what-you-can” basis. The largest single donation, Sherman-Marx recalls, was between 500 and 1,000 pesos,
about $25 to $50. “When I put the post on Facebook, I tagged the food bank in it and there were comments from people who bought them and they posted a picture of their rock, which was awesome and very sweet,” ShermanMarx said. At the end of the fundraising, Emeri and her family delivered the money and were fortunate to receive a tour of the food bank operation. “The woman who runs the food bank was in tears,” Sherman-Marx said. “For Emeri, I think it was really eye-opening. As we were leaving, we saw people lining up for the afternoon meal. For her to visualize and see people lining up … it was just really heartwarming. “My husband, Josh, and I teach her how fortunate we are. We get to go on vacation and do this stuff, and these people don’t even have food. It’s good for her to see and experience it.” Sherman-Marx believes this will be a yearly tradition, and Emeri agrees. “My favorite part was seeing
the people smile as they took a rock and looked at the inspirational message,” Emeri said. “My favorite rock had a rainbow and it said ‘love’ on the front and ‘never change who you are’ on the back. “It made me feel really good, realizing we’re doing something that will help other people in need that don’t have food,” Emeri added. “I would love doing it again.” Seeing her daughter and friends jump at the chance to help others was uplifting to Sherman-Marx. “It lets me know I’m doing something right. To see your child help somebody else is probably one of the most beautiful things a parent can do, and to do something that’s completely selfless … Josh and I both were just blown away,” she said. Seeing her daughter help people in need means even that much more as a Jew. “The first thing I said is this is tikkun olam, repairing the world. Helping one person at a time. That’s where it starts, and it just gets bigger from there.”
