Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Goldenberg Group hosts 4th annual May Day at Metroplex
PLYMOUTH » American May Day celebrations can be as distinctive as the month’s most famous holidays, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day.
However, at the Metroplex Shopping Center in Plymouth Meeting, they never diverge from their original purpose, always taking the shape of The Goldenberg Group’s unmistakable brand of philanthropy.
For its Fourth Annual Metroplex May Day on May 19, Blue Bell-based The Goldenberg Group and Cradles to Crayons teamed up for a “Battle of the Schools,” which saw students from 17 area schools in competition to collect donations of new or like-new clothes, shoes, toys, books, baby gear and new baby supplies for local children living in poverty.
At last year’s event clothing and essential items collected by students in 16 schools served 2,184 children, and this year easily dwarfed that accomplishment, noted Ellen Lissy Rosenberg, Vice President, Development and Civic Engagement for The Golden “This year enough was collected to serve more than 2,600 children,” Rosenberg said, explaining that as items were delivered they were just as quickly unloaded, sorted and categorized.
Participants in the 2017 “Battle of the Schools” competition include (from Pennsylvania): Arcola Intermediate School; Bridgeport Elementary School; Conshohocken Elementary School; Holy Cross Regional Catholic School; Jarrettown Elementary; McKinley Elementary; Plymouth Elementary School; PlymouthWhitemarsh High School; Pottsgrove High School; Ringing Rocks Elementary; Roberts Elementary School; Rosyln Elementary; Rydal Elementary; Sandy Run Middle
School; Schuylkill Elementary School; Wissahickon High School; and Carrcroft Elementary School in Wilmington.
The Goldenberg Group’s retail tenants and strategic partners support the collection effort, including: $200 in gift cards and snacks for volunteers from GIANT Food Stores; up to 20 volunteers from M&T Bank; 80 wooden pallets to move the collected items from Lowe’s Home Improvement; and transportation of the donations by You Move Me.
While this year’s champions were not yet determined on Monday, the winners of the 2016 Battle of the Schools for Top Overall Collector and Top Collector per Student were Roberts Elementary School and Conshohocken Elementary School, respectively, Rosenberg noted.
Taking up residence in the shopping center the company developed and operates provides the Goldenberg volunteers an inherent advantage to attract as much attention to the cause as possible, Rosenberg said.
“People see the truck and the balloons and were coming over asking ‘what are you doing?’ Then they would go and buy something at one of the retailers like Target for additional clothing to donate. And that’s part of what being in a shopping center does as opposed to being in a warehouse ... and we’re able to capitalize on that. I had this experience last year at Metroplex May Day where a young woman with a young son came up to us at the collection with a small bag of stuff she had bought at one of the retailers and told us that a couple of years ago when her kid was little she had really struggled and she was doing slightly better now and wanted to give back.”
The charitable event reached out to many of the center’s tenants as contributors, such as Lowe’s and Giant market, which provided refreshments throughout the day.
In Cradles to Crayons, a West Conshohocken nonprofit that provides homeless and low-income children with life’s basic essentials and operates as efficiently as any for-profit enterprise, The Goldenberg Group has zeroed in on an organization that deeply echoes founder and CEO Ken Goldenberg’s altruistic philosophy, Rosenberg pointed out.
“Cradles to Crayons is the ideal partner for us because in their warehouse they have a big sign that says ‘quality equals dignity.’ It’s actually tied in to an (event) we did last summer at the Metroplex, with focusing on the dressers at the homeless shelter because while life of a family is as chaotic as it is when you’re homeless, to be able to put your clothes away says something about the quality of living. We’ve been working with Cradles for over seven years and we go to the warehouse at least once a year to sort and pack up clothes for children individually by name,” Rosenberg added, “and what we see is that to have a T-shirt that says ‘daddy’s little girl,’ while that is a great T-shirt for someone to have, it’s not an appropriate T-shirt for the Cradles to Crayons demographic. They feel if a kid doesn’t have a dad and she gets a shirt like that, it’s not really helping. There’s a quality issue here, and it ties in really nicely with Goldenberg’s way.”
Michal Smith, Executive Director, Cradles to Crayons noted: “Sadly there are 7,000 more children living in poverty in the suburbs than there were at the height of the recession. This Fourth Annual Metroplex May Day, with our partner The Goldenberg Group, engages children to help children living in poverty by collecting vitally needed everyday essentials, clothing, books and shoes from 19 schools in our region. The clothing collected will serve 2,895 children, and will help us keep up with summer demand.”
In starting the company, Goldenberg sought to promote philanthropy as much as the profit-making side of the business, Rosenberg allowed.
“While we are a real estate development company the reason Ken Goldenberg founded the company was to do the public work that he always wanted to do. Ken works as much on the philanthropic side as he does on the development. The reason he was not at the Metroplex on Friday is because he was in Kenya for two or three weeks working on the charitable work that we do there. One of the things that I think makes Goldenberg a unique company is that we don’t have a list of stakeholders and we’re not a publically traded company,” Rosenberg noted. “There is a reason we have a staff of people just working on our People Helping People Foundation, because particularly if you’re going out and working with low income communities, you need to make sure you’re doing it in a nice way.”
May Day have been the most conspicuous display of benevolence by the company on Friday, but it wasn’t the only one.
“Friday morning, when we had all hands on deck at the Metroplex for May Day, it just happened that the fence we built around a vegetable garden at the homeless shelter needed repairs,” Rosenberg said, referring to the Stenton Family Manor shelter in Philadelphia.
“So this isn’t something we just do for charity day, which is important, but on any given day we have as many things happening on the philanthropic side as the development side.”