Boro Park Chaveirim Reveals its First Ever Customized Utility Truck for Chesed Missions

By Yehudit Garmaise:

    Brooklyn Chaveirim’s Boro Park Division hosted a ribbon-cutting event today at 3pm to reveal its new special operations vehicle, a $100,000 utility truck that is fully equipped and customized for doing chesed in the community.

  The truck, says Ari Fleischer, a Chaveirim volunteer and coordinator of 150 Boro Park volunteers for 10 years, is loaded with all the equipment Chaveirim might need for all of their chesed missions.

   In addition, Fleischer explained, many parts of the truck are customized, such as the lighting, the shelves, and rollouts that help to bring out large pieces of equipment.

   Fleischer explained that Chaveirim answers up to 300 calls of day for people who need help with everything from car trouble, being locked out of their houses, house floods, trees that are in danger of falling that need to be trimmed, gas leaks, carbon monoxide level checks, and the removal of raccoons and other animals in people homes.

   “We get a lot of calls asking for help with anything you can imagine,” said Fleischer, who said that he likes to volunteer for Chaveirim because he is following in the footsteps of his four brothers and his father, who started Bikur Cholim. “I come from a family that likes to help people 24 hours a day.” 

  Although Aron Yitzchak Kohn founded Chaveirim almost 20 years ago to provide all kinds of quick assistance to community members, the chesed organization’s volunteers have been using their own cars to tend to Yidden’s non-medical emergencies and racing back and forth to a garage on 11 Ave. and 48th Street to retrieve necessary equipment. 

  “AAA and other organizations always took too long,” said Fleischer, who was thrilled to add that the chesed organization’s new truck will “enable the Chaveirim to help more Yidden.”

   Elected officials, 66th precinct police officers, and financial sponsors of the truck came out to the home of Mr. Kohn at 1431 59th Street, which is Chaveirim’s headquarters, for a masked and socially distanced “Reveal Celebration” of the utility truck that, iyH, Fleischer hopes “will be staffed 24 hours a day and rolling the streets of Boro Park and serving our community for decades to come.”

Lights in the truck done by Supremeledlights

Photos by: Issac Y.