Ten years ago, Chloe Sandler came to Tel Aviv from England for a summer on the beach, met a man and never left. Today, she and her husband are happily raising their three daughters (with another baby on the way) in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat HaSharon. But the transition early on was difficult for Sandler.
However, after the birth of her first daughter, Sadie, “I started making mommy friends and it brought me to realize that I can have friends here and have a life here,” she said. “There’s no such thing as a perfect life, and everyone’s problems are relative. But one thing that puts things in perspective, is my work with Mothers Make a Difference.”
Mothers Make a Difference is a Facebook community of more than 3,000 mothers throughout the country that provides essential aid to mothers and children in need by donating gifts in kind to established charities, agencies, nongovernmental organizations and schools.
Sandler, together with eight other mothers, coordinates the logistics. They answer countless Facebook messages, are constantly on Whatsapp, monitor drop-off points, field urgent requests and run specific drives and campaigns.
The seeds for Mothers Make a Difference were planted seven years ago when Sandler saw a woman in a poor neighborhood in Tel Aviv who had rigged a carrier for her baby out of bags. Haunted by the image, she sent out a post on Facebook asking if there was a way to help women like the one she had seen. The response was overwhelming.
“We’re the type of people that will try to squeeze that bed into our little cars, and get it to where it needs to go to.”
One of those who responded was the then-British ambassador to Israel’s wife. “She had been doing a lot of charity work on the side, and really knew the limited resources that were out there,” Sandler said. “We met in Park HaYarkon and this is where the Mothers Make a Difference dream began.”
In mid-January, there was terrible flooding in the center of Israel. Two people trapped in a flooded elevator died. Countless property and possessions were destroyed. Sandler said the area of South Tel Aviv, where there are a lot of asylum seekers and refugee families, was particularly hard hit.
“All of the agencies called me the day after the flood saying that people have lost everything,” she said. “Within 24 hours, I must have received over 100 private messages from our Facebook group with urgent calls for assistance. Mothers were collecting items from as far as Jerusalem and Modi’in to help the mothers and children of South Tel Aviv.”
Through the organization, Sandler has found a way to close the supply and demand issues between the “have” and “have-nots” in Israeli society without spending a single shekel on overhead or infrastructure. But, ultimately, Mothers Make a Difference is about heart and soul.
“We are the kind of people that get dedicated because we get so affected by these stories,” Sandler said. “We’re the type of people that will try to squeeze that bed into our little cars, and get it to where it needs to go to.”
