MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: AJ Chalom
By AdministratorName: AJ Chalom 
Location: Highland Park, Illinois, USA
“I am a stay at home mother to two young children. I am a lifelong Humanistic Jew. I was very involved in community service as a teenager, as a young mother, I find that at this moment, community service and charitable giving is so important and can bring my life incredible meaning. I hopefully can make an impact that is larger than just my family and myself. I love watching my kids discover their own possibilities. When on my own I love cycling and cross-country skiing.”
How did you first hear about the Foundation? I received an invite to the Facebook group when the Foundation was founded and I went to the website to see how the organization was going to work.
Why are you a member? I love to support organizations that support the basic principles that I live by, and on top of that chooses a wide range of charities to support, that honestly, I don’t have to do the due diligence on all of the organizations and choose individually to donate. This organization allows me to support a wider range of causes that I normally would not have supported due to time.
Favorite cause categories: I support everything pretty evenly, they are all such important causes. I do think that Poverty, Health, Child Welfare and Education are very important categories where we can make a real difference in people’s lives.
Any beneficiaries so far that particularly moved or interested you? Circle of Women from Q2 piqued my interest because I was not fully educated of the situation of children, education and women in that part of the world. Their work impacts their recipients to strongly and that forces me to think outside my own circle. I also was interested in The Mountain Fund from Q3, again because their work in poverty is so impactful in areas that just have nothing compared to even poor people in our country. It is so completely out of the scope of comfort of the world that I know that it makes me pause, think, and be thankful that you can be a part of it, even if it is only a small part.