Shoah survivor, youth worker and volunteer to be inducted into JVN Hall of Fame

A Holocaust survivor, a youth worker and a man who has helped Belarussian Jews reconnect with their heritage are all set to be inducted into the Jewish Volunteering Network’s Hall of Fame next week.

In what will be director Leonie Lewis’s last awards event before she leaves JVN, the audience will see Lilian Levy, Adam Shelley and Jonathan Clingman inducted, after the trio were honoured for their unpaid dedication last year.

Survivor Levy, who volunteers on the editorial team at the Association of Jewish Refugees, has been volunteering for 60 years and last year won a lifetime achievement award. She said: “I don’t consider it altruistic. I do it because it gives me great satisfaction.”

She will be joined in the Hall of Fame by Shelley, who volunteers at the Jewish Lads and Girls’ Brigade “transforming the lives of Jewish young people,” and Clingman, a volunteer at The Together Plan, which has helped Jews in Belarus rediscover their Jewish identities a generation after Soviet rule.

The awards evening on 31 October at artsdepot in North Finchley will also include a ‘Faces of Volunteering’ exhibition, and an address from final awards speech from Lewis, who hands over to incoming director Nicky Goldman at the end of the year.

“You can see the astonishing difference that volunteers make,” said Lewis, speaking about the photo exhibition. “Using your free time, however little you have, to strengthen and support our community can help maintain the magnificent culture of volunteering manifested today.”

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