Neighbors helping neighbors

To support its Neighbors in Need program and to provide financial assistance to at least 25 organizations, as well as direct aid to individuals and families, the Woodmere-based Five Towns Community Chest will host its sixth annual Neighbors in Need evening at the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club on Nov. 19, honoring Hewlett residents Howard and Dana Taub, along with the community’s first responders.

“It’s a wide spectrum of agencies and affiliates that we assist, from the TEMPO Group to the Five Towns Early Childhood Center to the Center of Adult Life Enrichment,” said Community Chest President Steven Spiro. “We give to those agencies, and they in turn decide how to best help people through our funding.”
And the money doesn’t always go to such institutions. Community Chest also directly helps people in need.

“We’ve helped with clothes and food,” Spiro said. “We get requests like this all the time. These agencies and affiliates will tell us, ‘The other day a woman came to [us] looking for help. She’s caring for three children of her friend who’s in the hospital with brain cancer. This woman, out of the goodness of her heart, offered this woman and her children help in allowing them to stay with her at her apartment, and then the woman was hospitalized. Now she has the care and responsibility of taking care of the three children.’”

The Taubs, who own Sunny Atlantic Beach Club, were selected as the honorees for their community service, generosity and commitment to the Five Towns, said Community Chest Executive Director Bob Block.

“They have donated their facilities in Atlantic Beach to numerous nonprofits as event hosts, such as a volleyball tournament with Rock and Wrap It Up!, and most recently he hosted the Community Chest 5K Run and Family Walk over the Labor Day weekend,” Block said. “Howard Taub has been a generous financial supporter of many Community Chest efforts for many years, and he has been known to always lend a hand to his friends and neighbors when possible.”