Peninah Pick runs the Down the Aisle Kallah gemach, where she collects people’s surplus gifts and donates them to kallahs
When my father was niftar 15 years ago, I wanted to do something l’illui nishmaso. Around that time, I started noticing people asking what they could do with unneeded gifts they’d received and couldn’t return or exchange. One of my sisters-in-law in Lakewood was helping in a gemach that gives packages to kallahs, so I started collecting those gifts and sending them to that gemach.
When I was talking to my good friend Onit, she mentioned a friend of hers who was struggling financially; when this woman was a kallah, someone had given her some money to set up her house. What if, Onit and I brainstormed, we set up a gemach with all those unwanted gifts? Instead of fundraising for kallahs, we could give them the actual gifts!
I dedicated a room in my house to storing the objects people gave me, which were cluttering up their homes, then I’d give them to kallahs, saving them a significant amount of money.
When we first started, we sent out postcards to rabbanim, kallah teachers, and sheitelmachers letting them know what we were doing. At this point, we’re well-known, and I do very little advertising.
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