August 23, 2024 • 12 mins
In these divisive times, it’s important to remember that there are remarkable individuals inspiring others to work for positive change. Champions of Caring was founded in 1995 to help middle and high school students create social change. The organization is currently producing a documentary, "The Coral Ring Legacy," to promote and inspire social activism for people of all ages and backgrounds. I speak with Founder and President Barbara Greenspan Shaiman about this exciting project.
www.championsofcaring.org
Handles @championsofcaring On FB Champions of Caring 2
www.championsofcaring.org
Handles @championsofcaring On FB Champions of Caring 2
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am always inspired by people who are trying to
make positive social change. One of those people I've known
for many years is doing exactly that. Barbara greens Band
Shaman is the founder and president of Champions of Caring,
founded in nineteen ninety five to help middle and high
school students to create social change. Ten thousand students from
(00:20):
the Greater Philadelphia region have participated, and now they are
currently creating a documentary, The Coral Ring Legacy, to promote
and inspire social activism for people of all ages and backgrounds.
And I'm delighted to bring to the studio Barbara greens
Band Shaman. It's so great to see you. It's been
a while, right, it's been.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
A while, but Lorraine, it's always a joy to be
with you. We've known each other for a long time
and I'm a huge fan of yours and thank you
for your support over so many years. Wow, it's a.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Mutual admiration society. And you've been around long enough so
that the kids that you worked with in middle and
high school are now in their thirties and forties. Tell
us about the legacy of Champions of Care.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, I created Champions of Caring because I was very
upset about the violence, the inequities, the hatred, the discrimination,
all the isms that are in our society. And I
wanted to give young people a toolkit to teach them
how to address these issues. And I was so privileged
to work with over ten thousand students, but they were
(01:27):
from every end of the spectrum, from middle school to
high school, from the main line to inner city Philadelphia.
I believe when you bring people from different backgrounds together,
miracles can happen. And these young people created projects that
addressed homelessness, violence, social inequities in their community. One young
(01:48):
man his mother had just died of breast cancer and
he was so upset, so in her memory, he created
a health fare at his school because his mother had
never known to go to a doctor. So these young
people are my heroes. And I was thinking a few
years ago, I wonder what happened to these young people,
and I found out they're all over the world, They're
(02:10):
all over the United States, and we found many of
them and did a longitudinal study with the head of
the Social work department at Temple University, doctor Kimberly Goyette,
and we found that these young people are still at
thirty five and forty engaged in service, teaching these values
to their children, really living a life of a champion.
(02:32):
So we decided let's make a documentary to see what
they're doing, to film them, and to use their stories
as inspiration for other people. Because, as Martin Luther King
so brilliantly said, everyone can be great because everyone can serve.
And I really believe that so strongly. So we're creating
a film called The Carl Ring Legacy, and I'll explain
(02:56):
that in a minute, to inspire people to stand up,
to speak out, to create projects for social change. Because
if we could do this with middle school students and
high school students, everyone can get involved. And on our website,
Champions of Caring dot org, we have a toolkit which
gives you the steps for how to find your passions,
(03:18):
the causes you care about, your interests, understand your skills,
whom you'd want to work with, and create impactful projects.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, So, the Choral Ring Legacy is the name
of the documentary that you're creating. And I see that
you are, in fact wearing a choral ring, So tell
us the story of that choral ring. This choral ring
means the world to me. My parents and grandmother were
survivors of the Holocaust. My mother was in three concentration
(03:48):
camps and my father had worked for Oscar Schendler, but
unfortunately was sent on the death March and wound up
at the Terrezenstadt concentration camp outside of Prog, Czechoslovakia, where
he met my mom. They fell in love and when
they went back to their respective cities. My mother's was
large in Poland. This is after liberation in May of
(04:09):
nineteen forty five, Out of sixty five people in my
mother's family, no one was left. They then went to
Crackout Poland, where my father was from, and he found
his mother, who was in her fifties, which was incredible
that she had survived, and one of his brothers and
my grandmother had had a coral ring business in Crackout Poland.
(04:33):
When she was a young woman. She took the train
from Crackout Poland to Livorno, Italy and had a relationship
with a jeweler there, Signorina Maffei, and they worked together
for many years. Well, my grandmother, right before she was
taken to Auschwitz, she took this coral ring that I'm
now wearing and gave it to a man who worked
(04:55):
in the family business and said, please keep this and
my Sabbath candle six. I don't know what's going to
happen to me, but I'd like you to keep these
items for me, and if I'm lucky enough to survive,
I'll come and get them. So when she met my mother,
she said, oh, I have a coral ring for you.
They went to find the man and Lorraine, you're not
going to believe it, he denied having the ring. Oh no,
(05:19):
after all that had happened, she went and got the police,
and suddenly this ring miraculously appeared, and this became my
mother's engagement ring from my fiftieth birthday. My mother took
the ring off of her finger, put it on mine
and said, I want you to wear this ring every day,
(05:39):
and whenever you look at it, remember how this was
the most beautiful thing in my life after having survived
the Holocaust, that this was the beginning of my marriage,
my family, my children, and my grandchildren. And now I
want you to look at it and wear it and
think about can you be a mensch, a good, kind,
giving person every day and end your days every day
(06:04):
and reflect on was I kind, Did I reach out
to someone, did I make a phone call to someone
in need? How did you help someone today? So I
look at this ring Lorraine, thousands of times a day
and it's a trigger to always remind me to be
the best version of myself, to be kind, to be giving,
(06:24):
and to reach out to help people. And that's why
we named it the Choral Ring Legacy, because I want
the viewer to think about what do they have in
their background that triggers something for them to be the
best person that they can be. So tell us what
the status is of the documentary, The Cral Ring Legacy.
Are you still raising money for it? Tell us more
(06:45):
about that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, we're always raising money for it, So if anyone
is interested, I'm Barbara Champions of Caring dot org. You
can reach out to me. We have been filming seven
of our former champions in the document entry. We just
came back from Finland because one of our outstanding young
champions who's now forty and has four children. This is
(07:08):
a young African American man from West Philadelphia who's living
in Finland, which was voted the most racist country in
the world. Unfortunately, but Granger Simmons is changing that he
is extraordinary. He is working with asylum seekers who've come
from Ukraine, Slovakia, Iraq. He's helping them get jobs, get housing,
(07:33):
get their children into school, and opening up a new
vision for his community on accepting people who are different.
And we just spent five days with him and it
was glorious to see what an extraordinary champion and human
being he is, his wife and children are. He's teaching
his children to follow in his footsteps, and that's what
(07:55):
I love when it's passed on from one generation to
the next. We're also filming in Philadelphia, We're going to
be filming in North Carolina. We're going to be filming
in New Orleans. Because our champions are in different places,
all doing wonderful things. One of them, Sarry Toplin Leavey,
(08:16):
created a not for profit that's called Math Counts, where
she's working with inner city kids in New Orleans, teaching
them math but in non traditional ways, making it fun
because she understands that if you don't have math skills,
you will not succeed in life. Another, Austin Rapbaum, is
a music producer and he's working with inner city kids.
(08:38):
My heart just sings with joy when I see how
these young people that I knew when they were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
now at thirty five and forty are doing such extraordinary
things to change their community, to embrace people who need support.
It's a way of life, and that's what I was
hoping for.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, and that's why Champions of Caring been able to
accomplish planting seeds all over this country, certainly all over
the world. And I wonder, as we live in such
divisive times, such polemic times, and times in which we
see bigotry on the rise, the message and the symbolism
(09:19):
of the Coral ring strikes me as more important now
than ever before.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I agree with you, and I want people to feel empowered.
Everyone can do something. You don't have to start large,
start with a small idea. You know, isolation is such
a big problem in our society, especially after COVID. What
things can you do to reach out to someone who's isolated?
And you know, Lorraine, what really struck me. I saw
(09:47):
data recently that college students are feeling very isolated, elderly
people are isolated. What about making a phone call? You know,
we did something really fascinating at Temple Universit with doctor
Tanya Giovinetti from their psychology department. We created an intergenerational
course on positive aging, which included students from the age
(10:11):
of eighteen Are you ready to ninety five? We learned
together on Zoom. The seniors teach, the students teach, the
professor teaches, and it has been extraordinary to see this interaction.
We then created an intergenerational cafe where a senior is
(10:31):
hooked up with a student and they meet over five
or six times on Zoom by themselves, and we have
a card deck with different words on the card deck
to inspire the conversation. And again, these relationships are extraordinary,
and what we have found out and what the data
shows is that we have so much more in common
(10:53):
than we ever would have thought of. And we're all
reaching out for the support right now because these are
very frightening times, and I think the more we surround
ourselves with people that care about us, the healthier it
is for our society.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, light does overcome the darkness, and that's what Champions
of Caring has been doing for so so many years.
I have to mention that you also have speaking of
which we're talking about making a difference in being positive.
You've got not only a book called Leave your Lilier
Legacy Now ten simple steps to find your passion and
(11:31):
change the world. You've got a workbook. You've got it all.
And so if people want to know more information number
one about Champions of Caring, Number two about the curl
Ring Legacy and how they can support or follow the progress,
and number three about the book and all of the
materials that go along with it. How do they find
out more?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Please go to our website, Champions of Caring dot org.
If you can support us and making this documentary, I'd
be most appreciative if you can do that. On our website,
you can order the book from Amazon, and please feel
free to reach out to me Barbara at Champions of
Caring dot org. It's a great opportunity for us to
(12:13):
come together as a people to really talk about what
can we the people do to make our country and
the world a better place, and together we certainly can
do that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yes, since as you mentioned and as you quoted, doctor King,
everyone can be great because everyone can serve, and that's
what you've been doing these many, many years in so
many different ways. Barbara Greenspan Shaman, who is founder and
president of Champions of Caring. Thank you so much, thank you.
It's a pleasure.
I am always inspired by people who are trying to
make positive social change. One of those people I've known
for many years is doing exactly that. Barbara greens Band
Shaman is the founder and president of Champions of Caring,
founded in nineteen ninety five to help middle and high
school students to create social change. Ten thousand students from
(00:20):
the Greater Philadelphia region have participated, and now they are
currently creating a documentary, The Coral Ring Legacy, to promote
and inspire social activism for people of all ages and backgrounds.
And I'm delighted to bring to the studio Barbara greens
Band Shaman. It's so great to see you. It's been
a while, right, it's been.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
A while, but Lorraine, it's always a joy to be
with you. We've known each other for a long time
and I'm a huge fan of yours and thank you
for your support over so many years. Wow, it's a.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Mutual admiration society. And you've been around long enough so
that the kids that you worked with in middle and
high school are now in their thirties and forties. Tell
us about the legacy of Champions of Care.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, I created Champions of Caring because I was very
upset about the violence, the inequities, the hatred, the discrimination,
all the isms that are in our society. And I
wanted to give young people a toolkit to teach them
how to address these issues. And I was so privileged
to work with over ten thousand students, but they were
(01:27):
from every end of the spectrum, from middle school to
high school, from the main line to inner city Philadelphia.
I believe when you bring people from different backgrounds together,
miracles can happen. And these young people created projects that
addressed homelessness, violence, social inequities in their community. One young
(01:48):
man his mother had just died of breast cancer and
he was so upset, so in her memory, he created
a health fare at his school because his mother had
never known to go to a doctor. So these young
people are my heroes. And I was thinking a few
years ago, I wonder what happened to these young people,
and I found out they're all over the world, They're
(02:10):
all over the United States, and we found many of
them and did a longitudinal study with the head of
the Social work department at Temple University, doctor Kimberly Goyette,
and we found that these young people are still at
thirty five and forty engaged in service, teaching these values
to their children, really living a life of a champion.
(02:32):
So we decided let's make a documentary to see what
they're doing, to film them, and to use their stories
as inspiration for other people. Because, as Martin Luther King
so brilliantly said, everyone can be great because everyone can serve.
And I really believe that so strongly. So we're creating
a film called The Carl Ring Legacy, and I'll explain
(02:56):
that in a minute, to inspire people to stand up,
to speak out, to create projects for social change. Because
if we could do this with middle school students and
high school students, everyone can get involved. And on our website,
Champions of Caring dot org, we have a toolkit which
gives you the steps for how to find your passions,
(03:18):
the causes you care about, your interests, understand your skills,
whom you'd want to work with, and create impactful projects.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, So, the Choral Ring Legacy is the name
of the documentary that you're creating. And I see that
you are, in fact wearing a choral ring, So tell
us the story of that choral ring. This choral ring
means the world to me. My parents and grandmother were
survivors of the Holocaust. My mother was in three concentration
(03:48):
camps and my father had worked for Oscar Schendler, but
unfortunately was sent on the death March and wound up
at the Terrezenstadt concentration camp outside of Prog, Czechoslovakia, where
he met my mom. They fell in love and when
they went back to their respective cities. My mother's was
large in Poland. This is after liberation in May of
(04:09):
nineteen forty five, Out of sixty five people in my
mother's family, no one was left. They then went to
Crackout Poland, where my father was from, and he found
his mother, who was in her fifties, which was incredible
that she had survived, and one of his brothers and
my grandmother had had a coral ring business in Crackout Poland.
(04:33):
When she was a young woman. She took the train
from Crackout Poland to Livorno, Italy and had a relationship
with a jeweler there, Signorina Maffei, and they worked together
for many years. Well, my grandmother, right before she was
taken to Auschwitz, she took this coral ring that I'm
now wearing and gave it to a man who worked
(04:55):
in the family business and said, please keep this and
my Sabbath candle six. I don't know what's going to
happen to me, but I'd like you to keep these
items for me, and if I'm lucky enough to survive,
I'll come and get them. So when she met my mother,
she said, oh, I have a coral ring for you.
They went to find the man and Lorraine, you're not
going to believe it, he denied having the ring. Oh no,
(05:19):
after all that had happened, she went and got the police,
and suddenly this ring miraculously appeared, and this became my
mother's engagement ring from my fiftieth birthday. My mother took
the ring off of her finger, put it on mine
and said, I want you to wear this ring every day,
(05:39):
and whenever you look at it, remember how this was
the most beautiful thing in my life after having survived
the Holocaust, that this was the beginning of my marriage,
my family, my children, and my grandchildren. And now I
want you to look at it and wear it and
think about can you be a mensch, a good, kind,
giving person every day and end your days every day
(06:04):
and reflect on was I kind, Did I reach out
to someone, did I make a phone call to someone
in need? How did you help someone today? So I
look at this ring Lorraine, thousands of times a day
and it's a trigger to always remind me to be
the best version of myself, to be kind, to be giving,
(06:24):
and to reach out to help people. And that's why
we named it the Choral Ring Legacy, because I want
the viewer to think about what do they have in
their background that triggers something for them to be the
best person that they can be. So tell us what
the status is of the documentary, The Cral Ring Legacy.
Are you still raising money for it? Tell us more
(06:45):
about that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, we're always raising money for it, So if anyone
is interested, I'm Barbara Champions of Caring dot org. You
can reach out to me. We have been filming seven
of our former champions in the document entry. We just
came back from Finland because one of our outstanding young
champions who's now forty and has four children. This is
(07:08):
a young African American man from West Philadelphia who's living
in Finland, which was voted the most racist country in
the world. Unfortunately, but Granger Simmons is changing that he
is extraordinary. He is working with asylum seekers who've come
from Ukraine, Slovakia, Iraq. He's helping them get jobs, get housing,
(07:33):
get their children into school, and opening up a new
vision for his community on accepting people who are different.
And we just spent five days with him and it
was glorious to see what an extraordinary champion and human
being he is, his wife and children are. He's teaching
his children to follow in his footsteps, and that's what
(07:55):
I love when it's passed on from one generation to
the next. We're also filming in Philadelphia, We're going to
be filming in North Carolina. We're going to be filming
in New Orleans. Because our champions are in different places,
all doing wonderful things. One of them, Sarry Toplin Leavey,
(08:16):
created a not for profit that's called Math Counts, where
she's working with inner city kids in New Orleans, teaching
them math but in non traditional ways, making it fun
because she understands that if you don't have math skills,
you will not succeed in life. Another, Austin Rapbaum, is
a music producer and he's working with inner city kids.
(08:38):
My heart just sings with joy when I see how
these young people that I knew when they were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
now at thirty five and forty are doing such extraordinary
things to change their community, to embrace people who need support.
It's a way of life, and that's what I was
hoping for.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, and that's why Champions of Caring been able to
accomplish planting seeds all over this country, certainly all over
the world. And I wonder, as we live in such
divisive times, such polemic times, and times in which we
see bigotry on the rise, the message and the symbolism
(09:19):
of the Coral ring strikes me as more important now
than ever before.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I agree with you, and I want people to feel empowered.
Everyone can do something. You don't have to start large,
start with a small idea. You know, isolation is such
a big problem in our society, especially after COVID. What
things can you do to reach out to someone who's isolated?
And you know, Lorraine, what really struck me. I saw
(09:47):
data recently that college students are feeling very isolated, elderly
people are isolated. What about making a phone call? You know,
we did something really fascinating at Temple Universit with doctor
Tanya Giovinetti from their psychology department. We created an intergenerational
course on positive aging, which included students from the age
(10:11):
of eighteen Are you ready to ninety five? We learned
together on Zoom. The seniors teach, the students teach, the
professor teaches, and it has been extraordinary to see this interaction.
We then created an intergenerational cafe where a senior is
(10:31):
hooked up with a student and they meet over five
or six times on Zoom by themselves, and we have
a card deck with different words on the card deck
to inspire the conversation. And again, these relationships are extraordinary,
and what we have found out and what the data
shows is that we have so much more in common
(10:53):
than we ever would have thought of. And we're all
reaching out for the support right now because these are
very frightening times, and I think the more we surround
ourselves with people that care about us, the healthier it
is for our society.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, light does overcome the darkness, and that's what Champions
of Caring has been doing for so so many years.
I have to mention that you also have speaking of
which we're talking about making a difference in being positive.
You've got not only a book called Leave your Lilier
Legacy Now ten simple steps to find your passion and
(11:31):
change the world. You've got a workbook. You've got it all.
And so if people want to know more information number
one about Champions of Caring, Number two about the curl
Ring Legacy and how they can support or follow the progress,
and number three about the book and all of the
materials that go along with it. How do they find
out more?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Please go to our website, Champions of Caring dot org.
If you can support us and making this documentary, I'd
be most appreciative if you can do that. On our website,
you can order the book from Amazon, and please feel
free to reach out to me Barbara at Champions of
Caring dot org. It's a great opportunity for us to
(12:13):
come together as a people to really talk about what
can we the people do to make our country and
the world a better place, and together we certainly can
do that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yes, since as you mentioned and as you quoted, doctor King,
everyone can be great because everyone can serve, and that's
what you've been doing these many, many years in so
many different ways. Barbara Greenspan Shaman, who is founder and
president of Champions of Caring. Thank you so much, thank you.
It's a pleasure.
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