Friendship Circle Honored for Trendsetting Work With Children
NEW YORK, NY — The Manhattan Institute granted its prestigious Award for Social Entrepreneurship to Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov, founders of the trailblazing Friendship Circle, which pairs teenage volunteers with children with special needs in an effort to help those with developmental disabilities to eventually live independently.
The pair, who established the Friendship Circle in suburban Detroit in 1996, received the award, which included a $25,000 prize, at a Manhattan Institute ceremony honoring five other non-profit leaders.
“The Friendship Circle is an institution founded and inspired by the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, Levi Shemtov told the crowd of 200 as he and his wife accepted the honor. “He said: G-d could have created a perfect world, a world free of suffering, a world free of poverty and persecution, free of illness, injustice and inequality.
”But he didn’t,“ continued the rabbi. ”He made it imperfect, and he made us imperfect, so that we could perfect it ourselves, and thereby spiritually grow and perfect ourselves.”
lubab
mazel tov
The other side
We are very proud of our little cousins Levi and Bassie. Keep up the great work. Thank you for the Nachas.