A Men's Club breakfast, with a speaker, was scheduled for Sunday, March 22, 2020. At it's conclusion, we were to package Yellow Candles, get them arranged as needed for mailing, and bring them to the post office so they'd be mailed several weeks prior to Yom HaShoah Remembrance Day. We had been doing this successfully for years. The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything; just 10 days prior to our scheduled program, Temple activities for the upcoming weeks were cancelled.

The Men's Club board agreed that the Yellow Candle program was so important and meaningful to many people, that we'd find a way to get the candles packaged and mailed. We could not meet in a group, so volunteers were solicited to assemble the Yellow Candle packages from the safety of their own homes. We needed to assemble nearly 800 boxes, and wanted 16 volunteers to assemble an average of 50 boxes each. We were able to get these volunteers. Our chair of the Yellow Candles program spent many hours separating the candles and packing material by zip code into groups of approximately 50 candles. He then wrote up explicit instructions explaining how to assemble the boxes and what needs to be placed in each box. The volunteers could then pick up their packages of candles from one of the two locations that were convenient to most members. Within a few days afterwards, everything was returned to chair's house, and he then went to the post office to mail everything.

We were able to have another successful Yom HaShoah Candle Program, with donations on par with prior years. Net profits went the Camp Ramah Scholarship Fund.

One year later, we were faced with the same situation as the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions continued. Again, we solicited volunteers to help with the assembling of the packages. We ended up with more than double the number of volunteers as we had the prior year. Thus, each volunteer had to package, at most, 24 candles. Once again, we were able to mail the Yellow Candles to Temple members and have a successful program.

The attachments below include the following:

Detail Program Documents
- The detailed Yellow Candle Box Assembly instructions that were provided to the volunteers who were assembling the Yellow Candle packages.
- March 2021 letter from our Rabbi that was included in the Yellow Candle package that members received.
- March 2021 copy of the meditation card (both sides) that was included in the Yellow Candle package that members received.

Program Advance Planning
- 2/26/21 e-mail from Yellow Candles Chair and Men's Club Co-President Tom Falik to the volunteers on how to get their candles and packing materials.

Marketing
- 3/18/20 Men's Club e-mail request for volunteers to urgently assemble the Yellow Candle packages.
- 4/20/20 Temple e-mail reminding members to light their candles.
- 2/23/21 Temple e-mail request for volunteers to assemble the Yellow Candle packages.
- March 2021 Temple newsletter publicity.