why palms?

I founded Palms for Life Fund because I have seen poverty for the last thirty years, through my work with the United Nations World Food Programme. I know what it means for poor people to live a life with no hope for the future, and I know with complete certainty that we can make a difference by joining hands and working together.

I have seen first hand, from my own life experiences, that the cycle of poverty can be broken. It takes knowledge and participation at the local level, a strong commitment and lots of dedication, and a vision that takes in all the factors that create poverty.

Palms for Life Fund partners with local organizations that share our vision and that help us reach out to underprivileged people in poor countries. Palms ensures that our partners have the full capacity to effectively run their programs in the most decentralized and non-bureaucratic way. If they need computers to do this, we will make sure they get those computers; if they need funds to train and educate people, they will get those funds.

If children need to eat at school in order to learn, Palms seeks funds to bring food into the schools and to make the learning experience one of effectiveness and dignity. If kids need books to read and pens to write, we will make sure they get them. If they need medication to remove the worms that weaken their bodies every day, we will get it to them.

If mothers need to learn how to take better care of their children's health and nutrition and thus make the experience of motherhood one of quality and hope, and raise kids to be healthy and well nourished, then we will make sure this process takes place. We will actually insist that women be duly trained and educated as part of our support.

If girls need to become aware of their rights, protected from unwanted illnesses, from unnecessary humiliation, and educated so that they in turn become real participants in their communities, then Palms will try hard to make this possible.

Palms will make sure the voice of the poor is being heard loud and clear in all spheres of our society.

Hannah Laufer-Rottman
Executive Director

“The noble palm tree, symbol of renewal, serenity and joy, reminds us that by reaching out to others we can strengthen the lives of men, women and children around the world.”

 

Mission Statement

The mission of the Palms for Life Fund is to work hand in hand – palm in palm - with the poor in Africa, Latin America and Asia to support initiatives that break the cycle of poverty by addressing its root causes. Our focus is on the human capital, namely the feeding and education of schoolchildren, ensuring the health of young mothers and their infants, integrating adults into the local economy, and on empowering local organizations to bring communities to achieve social, economic and environmentally sustainable development.

Palms for Life Fund is particularly committed to girls education and to protecting children against all kind of abuses or exploitation.

The purpose: to provide poor people with opportunities to be educated, to be healthy and to access resources including information, training, technology and financial resources, and, to participate actively in decisions that affect their lives so they are fully empowered and have a true chance to get out of poverty.

The business: to establish alliances with organizations that share our purpose and work directly with poor communities and to raise funds on their behalf to support projects which have proven to be effective, and to produce results that have long lasting effects on the participants’ quality of life.

The values: to bring together individuals and donors who are committed to making a difference in the lives of millions of people, who embrace the concept of inclusion, participation and equal access and who believe that ending poverty works best under the umbrella of a global alliance.

 

Board of Directors

Hannah Laufer-Rottman - President and Executive Director

Ms. Laufer-Rottman is the founder of Palms for Life Fund. She is a former employee of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) where she served for almost 30 years. She has traveled extensively in poor countries and has had first hand experience dealing with poor communities. She has managed anti-poverty projects and large feeding programs as well as humanitarian operations in Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Her experience includes school feeding programs (food for education), vulnerable groups’ projects, advancement of women, rural development and assets creation. She launched one of the first WFP school feeding programs in the Latin American region in Ecuador, in 1986. On the humanitarian side, she secured and managed help for victims of earthquakes, floods, and social and political conflicts. In 1997, she was appointed Director for Ecuador and held this position for five years. During this assignment, she strongly advocated for universal coverage of social programs and successfully negotiated a $24 million donation from the US government which she leveraged to secure an additional $10 million in government counterpart funds, thus allowing the feeding of 1.5 million poor people in the country. In her latest position in New York, she established numerous new partnerships with large US corporations and foundations and with her team, securing over $6 million in grants. Hannah is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese and also speaks Italian, Yiddish, Hebrew, German and Dutch.  Hannah has an indefatigable commitment to helping the poor. She is an unconditional supporter of human rights and tolerance.

Eduardo Mirsky - Vice President

Mr. Mirsky works in the financial services industry with a major international firm. He currently resides in San Diego, California having moved recently from Miami, Florida where he resided for approximately 8 years. Eduardo is married and has two adopted children. He was born in Ecuador and raised in Canada where he attended McGill University in Montreal. Eduardo has been in the financial services industry for over 20 years, mostly working with Latin American countries. His employment experience has included Citibank, Royal Bank of Canada, Republic National Bank of New York, Prudential, Wachovia and more recently UBS. He is a highly trained and experienced professional in the fields of finance and investments. His lengthy career has taken him through many countries that suffer the ills of poverty and underdevelopment. On many fronts, Eduardo has taken time to give back to these impoverished societies through acts of charity and personal sacrifice. Palms for Life Fund is one of his most recent efforts. Eduardo is intimately familiar with the needs of poor countries such as Ecuador. He has lived the experience personally, not only having been born there, but also having lived with the people of Ecuador for many years.

Barbara A. Lax – Secretary

Barbara A. Lax is a versatile business executive with a broad range of experience working with non-profit arts, political, educational and social welfare organizations.  For more than 25 years she created and managed fundraisers ranging from small meet and greets for United States Congressional candidates to high end galas including a dinner for 2,000 people honoring Italian President Francesco Cossiga for the Ellis Island Restoration Committee and a four day international conference on the environment which featured US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Robert Kennedy, Jr., scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science , Ken Saro-Wiwa, son of the late Nigerian environmentalist, US astronaut Dr. Ellen Baker and the award winning environmental photography exhibition sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Program.  In addition to Ms. Lax’s consulting she also served as Executive Director of the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Director of National Programs for the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and Executive Director of the American Dance Guild.  In 2001, Ms. Lax retired from fund raising, but continues helping organizations.  In 2005 she spearheaded a campaign for The Chatham Synagogue to raise the necessary funds to purchase a building, the first new synagogue in Northern Columbia County, NY in over 100 years.  The synagogue now includes close to 100 families.  The majority of Ms. Lax’s time is now spent in her new vocation as President of The Well Dressed Cake, where she designs and prepares Wedding Cakes from her home in Columbia County.  She is married with a son and two fabulous golden retrievers.

Daniel A. Silverstein - Treasurer

Daniel A. Silverstein is a native of Glens Falls, NY. He graduated from Windham College in Putney, Vt. and attended graduate school at New York University’s Stern School of Business in New York City.  Dan is Managing Member of Heuristic Management, LLC, a business consulting firm in New York City with interests in real estate investments, publicly traded securities and private equity. He served as a private sector consultant to the United Nations World Food Programme in New York City from September, 2003 through March, 2004 during which time he was instrumental in the creation Universities Fighting World Hunger, a student-led initiative among universities in the United States to address the issue of chronic hunger in the developing world. He continues to serve that cause as an adviser to Dean June Henton at Auburn University in Auburn, AL.   Most recently Mr. Silverstein has collaborated with the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission and the UN Office for Partnerships in the development of a post-conflict plan to nurture civil and economic stability in Sierra Leone. He serves on the Advisory Board of EcoVerdance, a private company which distributes a fertilizer supplement to small farmers in the developing world. Mr. Silverstein lives in New York City.

 Andrew J. Trager - Director

Andrew J. Trager is a 10 year veteran of the Employer Services Division of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADP).  With nearly $9 billion in revenues and over 585,000 clients, ADP is one of the world's largest providers of business outsourcing solutions. Mr. Trager works with a vast array of small to mid-size organizations across multiple industries including not-for-profit entities such as The Robin Hood Foundation, The American Technion Society, and The New York Community Trust, to name a few.  Mr. Trager leverages his experience, advising his clients on HR, payroll, regulatory compliance, and benefits administration solutions.  During his time with an eLearning company founded by Sylvan Learning Systems, Mr. Trager worked with multi-national organizations such as Citigroup and JP Morgan, to implement executive education courses in partnership with leading business schools such as The Wharton School, and the University of Southern California. Mr. Trager also serves on a committee with Hedge Funds Care, a charity raising awareness among the hedge fund community about preventing and treating child abuse.  Mr. Trager is a graduate of the State University of New York College at Oswego, and received his Master of Arts from The University at Albany.

Advisory Board

Our Advisors provide valuable advisory and technical help; their very unique skills help Palms for Life move forward in its many initiatives. If you are interested in joining, or have questions please contact us at info@palmsforlifefund.org

Cara Elizabeth Yar Khan
Ms. Yar Khan brings a unique personal and professional international background to her role as private sector specialist with UNICEF in Angola, where she has been posted since March 2007. Prior to UNICEF, Ms. Yar Khan was working freelance as a Fundraising and Communications consultant in Shanghai, China for local NGOs and large multinational companies for two years after serving as the Senior Manager for Corporate Communications and Government Relations for Dell Inc in Panama City, Panama from 2003 - 2005. Ms. Yar Khan began her career with the United Nations World Food Programme in Quito, Ecuador in 2001 as the Public Relations and Fundraising Officer after graduating from the University of Guelph in Canada with a degree in International Development. Born in Hyderabad, India, Ms. Yar Khan was raised in Canada and speaks English and Spanish fluently, Portuguese, and some French and Mandarin.

Daniel Ahmad
Daniel Ahmad, a Canadian-British national, resides in Montreal, where he is employed in finance in the aviation industry. Trained at McGill, Paris, Oxford and Yale, he served the United Nations in various humanitarian capacities in Kenya, Republic of Congo, Ecuador and New York. His experience also includes electoral observation missions in Bosnia and Colombia. Daniel's most important life experience was managing three UNHCR refugee camps in Congo during a civil war from 1997-1999. He is interested in livelihood-economics issues, and keenly remembers when a previous boss mused, "World peace begins with a decent breakfast".

David L. Rottman
David Rottman is Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York, and a member of the Jung Foundation’s Continuing Education faculty. He is a member of the Faculty of the Archetypal Pattern Analyst Training Program of the Assisi Institute of Vermont. His seminars on psychology and human motivation have received wide acclaim in the United States and Canada. Mr. Rottman is the past President of the Career Counselors Consortium (CCC), an organization he founded in 1997 for the purpose of bringing the work of career counselors to the public. The CCC’s annual award for Distinguished Achievement in the field of Career Counseling has been named the “David Rottman Award.” Mr. Rottman served on the charter Board of Directors of the Association of Career Professionals International (formerly the International Association of Career Management Professionals), a 1500-member organization that he was also instrumental in founding. He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the ACP. He has supervised and trained many of the leading career counselors and career coaches in the New York Metropolitan area. Mr. Rottman writes frequently on the subject of careers, and his articles have appeared in local and national publications. The National Business Employment Weekly, a Wall Street Journal publication, honored him twice for having written one of the year’s Ten Best Articles on Careers. Mr. Rottman has a Master’s in Applied Psychology from New York University.

Kathy Hansen
Kathy Hansen has over 12 years of experience in building partnerships with corporations, foundations, and governmental agencies. She is currently consulting for the Institute for OneWorld Health in San Francisco (iOWH), and formerly worked for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in New York. She holds a Masters in Public Administration with an emphasis in Nonprofit Organizational Management from the University of Colorado at Denver, and has completed coursework toward a Masters in Global Public Health from New York University. She has traveled and worked on projects in East Africa, including Tanzania, and has prepared, monitored, and evaluated projects and proposals in public health in conjunction with Ministries of Health, community based organizations, and technical staff representing nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies. Her specific areas of interest and work in global public health include child survival from neglected diseases, environmental health (water and sanitation), HIV/AIDS (prevention, care, and treatment), safe motherhood, operations research, emergency healthcare in conflict settings for refugees/internally displaced populations, and building the capacity of community health workers through training and ongoing technical assistance.

Michael Fitzpatrick
Michael Fitzpatrick has some 40 years of professional experience in the planning, design, construction and operation of irrigation schemes and rural development projects, and the management of multi-national and multidisciplinary teams.

This experience has been acquired with engineering consultants in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, and with Government agencies in Africa and South Asia. During the last 23 years of his career, he worked with the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation’s Investment Centre in all regions of the world assisting national teams with the planning and design of agricultural and rural development projects for financing by multilateral funding agencies.

Mirella Mokbel Genequand
Mirella Mokbel is native of Lebanon where she graduated from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1976 with a masters degree in Nutrition. After a few years of work as a senior research assistant in the Food Technology and Nutrition department of AUB, she obtained a UNU fellowship which allowed her to join the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from which she graduated in 1985 with a PhD. Her international work experience started soon after her graduation in the Nutrition Assessment Service of the Food and Agricultural Organisation in Rome followed by a consultancy with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) as a Monitoring and Evaluation adviser in the Project Design Service. She joined the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1988, where she worked for nearly 18 years. As chief of the Food Aid for Development Unit, she was responsible for coordinating WHO technical assistance to WFP: advising on policy and programmatic issues and leading/participating on behalf of WHO in the situation analysis, design and evaluation of WFP country programmes and projects in many countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Currently a free-lance consultant, she continues to participate in the design and evaluation of technical assistance programs in the area of nutrition and food security.

David Klein
David started his career at consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he established himself as a strategic thinker and people leader. Currently in New York, David is known as an innovator, focusing on consumer marketing and business development, at American Express.  Additionally, David is a Harvard-certified mediator, a capacity in which he has settled countless legal disputes.  David holds a BA in Political Science, Economics, and International Business from Brandeis University.  He has had many memorable experiences abroad, most notably when he lived in Paris, teaching English as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant in the French public school system.  He has also worked with organizations in several countries across Asia, Europe, and Latin America.  David is fluent in English and French, and hopes to soon add Spanish to the list.

Naama Laufer
Naama has five years of experience in the field of communications. After graduating from Brandeis University with a BA in Politics, she went on to develop and manage domestic and international public relations programs for clients across several industries. Naama has executed several successful brand entries into the United States as well as developed innovative strategies to revitalize traditional brands. She was an active participant in Palms for Life Fund's first foray into the Young Designer Series and will continue her non profit work in Angola where she will take a break from her for-profit career to revamp and reenergize the Development Workshop's communications platform.

Suneeta Dewan
Suneeta is an honors graduate in Economics from Osmania University in India and a Juris Doctor from Seton Hall School of Law in the U.S. Before embarking on her career in Law, Suneeta owned and managed a real estate company and a maritime business. She is Secretary of the Indo American Lawyers' Association and on the board of the Northwest Bergen (N.J.) Branch of the American Association of University Women, where she is Chairperson of Legal Advocacy. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Women Lawyers of Bergen County and the South Asian Bar Association of New York. She also assists Manavi, an organization for battered South Asian women, with weekend legal clinics. There, she counsels women on immigration matters and frequently files self-petitions.

Tatiana Osorio
Tatiana has ten years of fashion industry experience ranging from product development to sourcing and licensing for companies such as Bottega Veneta, Tod's and Kenneth Cole. She eventually came to realize how unsustainable many industry processes can be and has since committed to utilizing her skills and knowledge to assist fashion companies in building sustainable business practices while maintaining their brand and stylistic identity. Tatiana received a BS in Business Management from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro, and went on to graduate cum laude from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a degree in fashion merchandising management. She also holds a Master's in Fashion and Design Brand Management from the prestigious SDA Bocconi in Milan.

In addition, Palms for Life Fund receives an enormous support from family, friends and colleagues in the form of encouragement, marketing, financial support and networking. The list of friends grows every day.

 

PRIVACY POLICY

We will not share your information with any third-party organization without your explicit permission to do so.

Thank you for visiting the Palms For Life Fund Web Site. We appreciate your interest in our organization. Because we share your concern about privacy, we are letting you know how we collect information about you, what information we collect, how we use the information, under what circumstances we disclose it, and what choices are available to you regarding such data collection. This Privacy Statement covers information collected at the Palms for Life Fund Web site: www.palmsforlifefund.org. For simplicity, we will refer to it as "our site."

Use of Cookies
Our site uses "cookies" which are small files that allow us to store and sometimes track what you are looking at when you visit our site. If you are concerned about the potential use of information gathered from your computer by "cookies," you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify or reject cookies.

Collection and Use of Non-personal Information
If you do nothing during your visit but browse, read pages, or download information, our site's operating system will automatically record the following information about your visit.

1. The Internet domain for your Internet service, such as "xcompany.com" or "xcompany.net" if you use a private Internet access account, or "yourcollege.edu" if you connect from a college or university domain.
2. The type of browser that you use, e.g., "American Online version 7" or "Microsoft Internet Explorer 5."
3. The type of operating system that you use, e.g., Windows or Macintosh.
4. The date and time you visit our site, and the Web pages that you visit on our site.
5. The address of the previous web site you visited, if you linked to us from another web site.

This information is used to help us diagnose technical problems as well as to help us track user interests. We gather this information in the aggregate — as a total, not linked to individual users — and we may share it with our sister affiliates, as well as with certain other reputable organizations that share our interests.

Collection and Use of Personal Information
Many areas of our site are accessible without registration of any kind. Some of our services require personal identification in order to be effective. This includes, but is not limited to, our online donation form. This site collects and uses personal information that you provide for the purposes described below. By "personal information," we mean information that on its own can specifically identify you. Personal information you provide is stored in a secure location and is accessible only by designated staff. This may include, among other things, your name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, etc. If you contribute online to Palms for Life Fund the information we obtained during your visit to our site is provided to our merchant partners. This is to enable the transaction to take place and for the contribution to be deposited into our account. These merchants by contract cannot use this information for another purpose without your express permission. We will not share your information with any third-party organization without your explicit permission to do so.

Links to Other Sites
The privacy policies and practices contained in this Privacy Statement do not apply to ANY external links. The Palms for Life Fund Privacy Statement only applies to our site or any future sites that we may develop. It does not cover sites that are linked to our sites for which we are not responsible ("linked-sites"). These linked-sites will have their own policies and practices, which may be different from ours. We therefore encourage you to familiarize yourself with the policies and practices of the linked-sites, especially if you provide personal information to them.

Amendments and Consent to This Privacy Statement
Palms for Life Fund retains the right to amend or otherwise update this Privacy Statement at any time. By using our site, you consent to the collection and use of the information as we have described. If we change our policies and practices, we will post the changes in our Privacy Statement so that you are always aware of them. With this knowledge, you can make an informed decision about whether you wish to provide personal information to us.

How to Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, contact Hannah Laufer-Rottman at hannah.laufer@palmsforlifefund.org or write to Palms for Life Fund, 217 East 31st Street, New York, New York 10016.

 

Transparency

Palms for Life is committed to good governance practices and to keeping our donors and friends informed about our work and the use of the funds entrusted to us.

Please click below to see our Forms 990.

990-EZ 2006 (for information only; not submitted to IRS)

990-EZ 2007 (submitted to IRS)

990-EZ 2008

Annual Report 2007 – Click here

Annual Report 2008 – Click here

For any additional information please write to info@palmsforlifefund.org