Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Chevy Chase residents Lauren Rubenstein and her son Jake Shapiro—and Shapiro's friend Eli Schwat—traveled to Haiti to help finish building a house for a family left homeless after the January 2010 earthquake.
When Lauren Rubenstein first went to Haiti in the summer of 2011, she had no idea what she was getting into. Rubenstein—a yoga teacher and therapist from Somerset, in Chevy Chase—took that trip to teach yoga (through a YogaKids program) to some of the poorest kids in the western hemisphere—kids who had been left homeless after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. But the trip turned into so much more. She bonded with young Michelda (who was 2 when the earthquake hit, and who had been living in a tent ever since) and her mother, and decided—when she got back to Chevy Chase—to sponsor Michelda through Partners in Development. For only $30 a month, the sponsorship program "[enabled] these kids to have clothes and food and be able to go to school…
Monday, July 16, 2012
With eager spirits, three volunteers set off on a humanitarian trip to Haiti. Forty hours later, they were back in Maryland, never having gotten past Newark, NJ.
When Lauren Rubenstein set out for Dulles airport before dawn last Wednesday, she had a lot to look forward to: a week and a half in Haiti, helping a family build its first house since the Haitian earthquake, teaching kids yoga, feeding hungry bellies. But by Thursday evening, the excitement was gone and anticipation had turned to bitter frustration, as she returned to her home in the Town of Somerset, in Chevy Chase. Hearing her tale, one might not believe she is scheduled once again be on a plane to Port-au-Prince—today. After weeks of taking malaria pills, getting special vaccinations, gathering donations of beef jerky sticks, soap and children’s underwear, and finding other yoga teachers to cover her yoga classes while she would be …
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Lauren Rubenstein, of the Town of Somerset, is working to raise enough money to build a house for four-year-old Michelda and her family in Haiti, and she hopes to be able to bring local teens down to Haiti to help construct it.
Lauren Rubenstein doesn’t just do yoga for her own benefit. Nor does she limit teaching yoga to local children whose parents can afford the class fees. No, Rubenstein’s yoga calling is a little broader than that. In less than a year, Rubenstein, a psychotherapist and yoga therapist, has made two trips to Haiti’s tent cities to teach Haitian children yoga. She’s also become the sponsor of Michelda—one of the children living in the tent cities—and she’s working with local business owners in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area to come up with unique ways to help Haiti—and Michelda. Last July, Rubenstein traveled to Haiti with YogaKids’ Bridge of Diamonds Foundation, an organization that sends yoga teachers to Haiti to teach yoga to some of the …
Frances Wu
8:08 am on Saturday, March 30, 2013
Somebody is already doing what Jake wants to do. Check out Fonkoze, www.fonkoze.org - based in Port au Prince, with its U.S. base here in DC. A great organization! more ›