Connecting Our Communities Through Awareness, Safety, and Security.
עם אחד, לב אחד • One People. One Heart.
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Why We Exist
Project Connect was founded on a simple belief: when communities are connected, they are stronger, safer, and better prepared to face whatever comes their way.
We develop and lead community awareness campaigns, in collaboration with trusted institutions and organizations, that shine a light on important issues, start conversations, and help communities look out for one another.
Because when it matters most, labels and differences fade away. We are one family, responsible for one another.
What We Do
Project Connect is built around two core programs that work together to strengthen and protect our communities.
Program 1
Awareness Campaigns
We identify important issues, partner with trusted specialty organizations, and develop targeted campaigns — bringing them directly to shuls, schools, and community venues.
Featured campaign
☀️ Summer Safety & Awareness Campaign — with Hatzalah Jersey Shore
Program 2
Community Connect
We build WhatsApp communication networks that keep communities connected and informed in real time.
Now live
🏘️ Neighborhood blocks
Coming soon
🕍 Shuls · 🎓 College campuses · 🏘️ More blocks
How We Work
Project Connect believes awareness is most effective when trusted organizations, community leaders, and families work together.
Rather than simply sharing information, we collaborate with subject matter experts and respected organizations to create community awareness campaigns that encourage meaningful conversations and practical action.
Every campaign is designed to help families make safer decisions, strengthen our community, and reduce preventable tragedies.
☀️ Featured Campaign
Community Partner: Hatzalah Jersey Shore
Project Connect partnered with Hatzalah Jersey Shore to launch a community-wide Summer Safety & Awareness Campaign designed to encourage meaningful conversations about safety at home.
Approximately 20 synagogues across the Jersey Shore community participated. Hatzalah members delivered brief safety messages encouraging families to bring home the Project Connect Summer Safety & Awareness Guide and review it together.
The campaign demonstrated how trusted organizations and Project Connect can work together to bring meaningful awareness initiatives directly to the community.
Community Resources
Tap any card to read more. Share these with your family, neighbors, school, or shul.
These topics have been shared directly with local shuls and schools as part of our ongoing safety campaigns.
Every teenager should have a private way to tell a parent, "I need help" — without having to explain themselves in front of friends or in an uncomfortable situation.
Luxury watch raffles have become increasingly common in our community. While often done for charitable causes, they raise important questions about gambling, risk-taking, and the messages we send to our children.
Every summer, thousands of families head to Deal. More people means more cars, more bikes, more pedestrians, and more activity everywhere. A little patience and consideration go a long way toward making it a great summer for everyone.
Summer parties, unsupervised time, and easy access to parents' liquor cabinets. This is a conversation every parent needs to have — before someone else does.
Ringing ears are a warning sign. Hearing damage is cumulative — and our community's semachot may be taking a toll we don't notice until it's too late.
Helmets save lives — and adults set the example. Kids learn by watching what the grown-ups do.
Children should not be operating e-bikes or electric scooters. These are motorized vehicles that require judgment, experience, and an understanding of traffic laws.
Children are not born understanding traffic patterns, turning vehicles, blind spots, or how quickly a dangerous situation can develop. These are learned skills that parents must teach.
Even on a mild day, the temperature inside a parked vehicle can rise to dangerous levels within minutes.
If a driver can't see you, you have a serious problem. Make yourself visible before you ride at night.
Most emergencies are preceded by something unusual. Paying attention to your surroundings can help you recognize a problem before it becomes one.
Don't wait for an emergency to figure out how to escape. Plan now — and practice it with your whole family.
G-d forbid there's a fire or an emergency where cell service is interrupted — have a meeting place ready. Make a plan and share it with a trusted family member.
No child — and frankly, no adult — should be swimming in the ocean when lifeguards are not on duty.
Drowning is often silent. There is no yelling, splashing, or warning. That's why layers of protection matter.
Want to share these with your community?
Reach out and we'll send you ready-to-share materials for your school, shul, or block.A Project Connect Series
Bringing awareness to the issues every Jewish community is facing — the conversation starts here.
Real issues. Real conversations. Real communities.
A growing fundraising trend is forcing us to ask an uncomfortable question: what happens when giving becomes something we do because we might get something back?
The Wheel, the Hype, and the Soul of Tzedaka
Luxury watches. Designer handbags. Exclusive trips. Knicks Finals tickets. Increasingly, charitable campaigns are being built around highly desirable prizes, spinning wheels, and the promise of "great odds."
The causes are real. The organizations are often doing important work. But the question is not only whether these campaigns raise money. The question is: what are they teaching?
The excitement is carefully engineered. "Almost sold out." "Low numbers still available." "Great odds." The language may be effective, but it also mirrors the language and psychology of gambling.
And this is no longer just about adults. Teens and young adults see these campaigns, share them, enter them, and in some cases pool money together hoping to win a prize they can resell for profit. When young people begin calculating the return on investment of a tzedaka campaign, we should pause.
This concern is even greater at a time when gambling has become more accessible than ever. Sports betting apps have brought gambling onto phones, into bedrooms, dorm rooms, and yeshiva hallways. Our community is not immune.
Into that environment, we are introducing spinning wheels, variable rewards, urgency tactics, and prize-driven giving — and telling ourselves it is different because the money goes to charity.
But tzedaka is not meant to be a transaction. Tzedaka comes from tzedek — justice, righteousness, obligation. We give because someone needs. We give because Hashem entrusted us with the ability to help. We give because it is right.
Our community has built an extraordinary culture of giving. People show up for one another in ways that are humbling and inspiring. That culture was built by generations who gave quietly, consistently, and without expectation of personal return.
Fundraisers must raise money. Organizations have real needs. This article is not a criticism of any particular organization or fundraiser. It is an invitation to reflect on the long-term messages we send about giving, community, and responsibility.
If the spinning wheel becomes how our children first experience tzedaka, we risk redefining giving as something we do only when there is something to get. And if, in the process, we normalize the psychology of gambling for a generation already vulnerable to it, the cost may be far greater than any prize.
No ticket, watch, trip, or luxury item is worth weakening the soul of tzedaka. Our inheritance is worth protecting. The values we pass on matter as much as the dollars we raise.
— Awareness, a Project Connect Series · www.projectconnect18.com · info@projectconnect18.com
The expectations we have created, the future our children see, and the conversation we need to have.
Every parent wants the same thing: for their children to have an easier life than they did.
We work hard, save, sacrifice, and worry because we want to remove obstacles from our children's path. We want them to get married with confidence, build families, buy homes, and look toward the future with excitement rather than fear.
But an uncomfortable question is beginning to emerge: are we actually doing the opposite?
The Cost of Normal
Across our communities, the cost of living continues to climb — and so do our expectations. Summer homes, holiday travel, luxury vehicles, elaborate semachot, designer clothing. These have become so normalized that many families no longer see them as luxuries at all. They are simply what life looks like.
There is nothing wrong with financial success. We should want our children to thrive. But the question is no longer whether success is good. The question is whether the definition of success has become so expensive that many young people feel they can never realistically attain it.
At the same time, the ground beneath us is shifting. Family businesses that once supported two or three families now strain to support five or six. Retail is shrinking. Wholesale is under pressure. Real estate is more challenging. Artificial intelligence is disrupting entire industries. Yet our expectations continue to move in only one direction: upward.
What Our Children Are Feeling
Talk to enough teenagers and young adults and a pattern emerges. Many are not excited about the future. They are intimidated by it.
They see the cost of housing, the cost of raising a family, and the lifestyle that surrounds them. Instead of asking how quickly they can get started, some are quietly asking whether they will ever catch up. Some delay marriage. Some delay having children. Others wonder quietly whether the life they are expected to build is still within reach.
"The problem is not that our children are aiming too low. The problem is that we may have moved the finish line so far that many are afraid to start the race."
What Success Actually Looks Like
Before we define success for our children, it may be worth asking what success actually means.
It is not only about money. A successful life is a full one — a strong marriage, a home filled with presence not just things, children who feel seen and supported, not just provided for. It is the discipline to take care of yourself, to keep learning, to give back to your community. It is showing up for aging parents, for friends in hard moments, for a community that needs you.
None of that requires a summer home. It requires time, intention, and the willingness to be there.
Permission to Build Slowly
There is something else our children need to hear.
Not everyone starts in the same place. Not everyone reaches the same destination. And that's okay.
We are raising a generation in a world built on instant gratification. Everything is available now — on demand, overnight, one click away. They absorbed that completely. So when they look at where their parents are today, they feel they need to get there tomorrow.
They don't see the 20 or 30 years it took to build what they're looking at. They see the finish line and feel they're already behind.
They aren't.
Most of us spent decades getting to where we are. We made mistakes, started over, built slowly and imperfectly. That is not failure — that is how a life gets built.
More importantly, a successful life does not require matching everything you see around you. Success is not measured by the size of a home, the car in the driveway, or the vacations on social media. It is measured by the strength of your relationships, your character, your contribution to others, and the life you build over time.
If we can give our children two things — a broader definition of what a good life looks like, and the permission to take the time to build it — we may be giving them something more valuable than anything money can buy.
Because the greatest gift we can give our children is not a lifestyle. It is a future they believe they can afford to build.
— Awareness, a Project Connect Series · www.projectconnect18.com · info@projectconnect18.com
Pre-gaming, edibles at parties, drinking and driving — and the conversations every parent needs to have before summer gets any louder.
Pre-gaming, edibles at parties, drinking and driving — and the conversations every parent needs to have before summer gets any louder.
Summer is here. School is out. The kids are out late, friends are everywhere, and the energy is high. For most of our teenagers, it's the best time of the year.
It's also when underage drinking peaks — and when the consequences can be most severe. This article isn't about fear. It's about responsibility. And it starts with an honest conversation that too many of us are putting off.
Pre-gaming: The Danger No One Sees
Pre-gaming — drinking quickly before going out — is one of the most dangerous patterns in teenage drinking, and one of the least discussed. Kids drink fast, in large quantities, in someone's basement or bedroom, before heading out to a party or a friend's house. By the time they arrive somewhere, they may already be in serious trouble.
Parents need to know this is happening — not as a rumor, but as a reality in our community. The first line of defense is simple: lock up your liquor. If it's in your house and it's accessible, it will be found.
Your Home, Your Example
Having teenagers over — even casually, even late at night — is a bigger responsibility than many parents realize. Know who is in your house, know what they're doing, and be present. A teenager who feels genuinely supervised is far less likely to make a dangerous decision than one who feels invisible. If alcohol is at your gathering, you are responsible for what leaves your door.
What Are We Modeling?
Our kids pay attention to far more than we realize. They watch how we celebrate, how we socialize, and how we make decisions. There is nothing wrong with responsible adults enjoying a drink. But it's worth being mindful of the messages we send when alcohol becomes the centerpiece of every gathering or celebration.
The goal isn't to eliminate alcohol from our lives. It's simply to remember that our children are always watching, and often learning more from what we do than what we say.
Drinking and Driving
Drinking and driving ruins lives. Make this a rule in your family — zero ambiguity, no exceptions: do not drive after drinking any alcohol. Not a little. Not just down the block. Never.
Tell your teenager explicitly: if you are ever in a situation where the driver has been drinking — or if you've been drinking yourself — don't be afraid to call me. I won't be mad. I will come get you. Then actually mean it. Don't be mad. The call you get at midnight is so much better than the one you don't.
The Danger Hiding in Plain Sight: Edibles
Cannabis-infused gummies, chocolates, cookies, and candies may not be common at parties — but they exist, and both parents and children need to be aware. When they are present, they are completely indistinguishable from regular snacks. A gummy bear is a gummy bear. A brownie is a brownie. There is no way to tell by looking.
Teach your children this rule clearly and without exception: do not eat loose candy, baked goods, or any food at a party that didn't come from a sealed, store-bought package.
Edibles are far more dangerous than people expect. The effects are delayed — sometimes by an hour or more — meaning someone can consume a very large amount before feeling anything, and then be completely overwhelmed. For a teenager with no tolerance, that can require emergency care.
This is not a conversation to have once and forget. Remind your kids before every party, every gathering, every late night out.
The Conversation That Matters Most
No article, no school assembly, no community message will do what a direct, honest conversation between a parent and child can do. Not a lecture. A real conversation — one where you acknowledge that you know the world your teenager is navigating, that you're not naive, and that you trust them.
Ask them what they've seen. Tell them what you've seen. Have that conversation this week. Before summer gets any louder.
— Awareness, a Project Connect Series · www.projectconnect18.com · info@projectconnect18.com
A conversation every parent needs to have with their teenager — before they need it.
You don't need a perfect moment. You just need to have the conversation.
Every teenager should have a way to tell their parents, "I need help," without having to explain it in front of friends, from the back seat of a car, or while feeling embarrassed, uncomfortable, or scared.
Set up a code word.
Agree on a phrase right now — something only the two of you know that sounds completely normal in a text message. Something like:
"Hey Mom, did you feed the dog?"
To everyone else, it means nothing. To you, it means: I need you to come get me.
No questions asked. No lecture in the car. No discussion that night. Just get them home safely.
Pick the word together. Mean it. And if they use it, keep your promise.
The code word isn't just for drinking and driving. It's for any situation where something feels wrong, unsafe, or simply uncomfortable. Maybe the driver has been drinking. Maybe friends are using drugs. Maybe the party is getting out of control. Maybe your child just wants out.
Whatever the circumstance, the message should be the same: if your instincts tell you something isn't right, get out and call home.
And because alcohol is one of the most common factors in serious teenage accidents, every family should have a direct conversation about drinking and driving.
Don't drive after drinking. Ever. Not a little. Not just down the block. The rule has no exceptions: do not get behind the wheel after drinking any alcohol.
Don't get in the car with someone who has been drinking either. Even if they say they're fine. Even if everyone else is getting in. Feeling fine and being fine are not the same thing.
And if they ever find themselves in that situation? Give them the words before they need them:
"I really need to use the bathroom, can you pull over?"
"I think I'm going to be sick, please let me out."
It doesn't matter if it's true. Getting out safely is all that matters.
Most teenagers will never need the code word.
But if they ever do, you'll be glad you had the conversation before they needed it.
And if you get that call or text — don't be mad. Not that night.
The call you get at midnight is so much better than the one you don't.
— Awareness, a Project Connect Series · www.projectconnect18.com · info@projectconnect18.com
More articles coming soon.
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Project Connect identifies important issues affecting our community, partners with trusted specialty organizations, and launches targeted awareness campaigns — bringing them directly to shuls, schools, and community venues.
We're looking for volunteers who want to help make these campaigns happen.
Ways to Get Involved
If you care about your community and want to help make a real difference, we'd love to hear from you.
Set up a security chat for your block and join our network of block captains — the first line of community safety.
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Start my block chat →Jewish students on campus deserve to feel connected and safe. Start a chat network for your campus — we'll show you how.
Start my campus chat →Help us put safety equipment directly into the hands of community members who need it. Every sponsorship makes a tangible difference.
How We Started
October 7th changed everything.
When hamas attacked southern Israel, what was striking — and painful — was that while each kibbutz and community had internal chats connecting its own members, most had no connection to the kibbutz a mile away, or five miles away.
That realization led to a simple question: what about here?
In Brooklyn, the idea took shape — block chats with a trusted neighbor serving as a local captain. In the event of a real emergency, information can be shared in real time. Because in an emergency it doesn't matter what type of Jew you are — we're all one people.
With the help of some local shuls who shared the message, a network began to take shape and more captains started setting up chats.
Then Chanukah came. Every year there are fires, and the holiday brings real risk — so a fire safety email went out to shuls to share with their communities, covering fire escape plans and what every family should know. Most recently, as the weather turned warm and kids started riding scooters to school again — too many without helmets, too many on e-scooters without knowing the rules of the road — an email was sent to schools to be distributed to their parent body.
Project Connect is a real grassroots movement being built one block, one shul, one school, and one conversation at a time.
"Our ultimate goal is to play a part in bringing Am Yisrael together — because there is so much more that unites us than divides us."
Reach Out
We'd love to hear from you — whether you want to join the network, have a question, or are interested in sponsoring.