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January's Charity of the Month: Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation

In 2000, Liza Bercovici’s transformed her devastating grief from the death of her 13-year-old daughter into a legacy that memorializes her daughter’s love of dance by founding a dance program for underserved youths.

The Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation (GAEF), based in Encino, California, was awarded a $5,000 grant by the MDRT Foundation. GAEF was founded by Bercovici, in memory of her daughter Gabriella Axelrad, an avid dancer, who was killed by a car while bicycling with her family on vacation in 1999.

In the months following her daughter’s death Bercovici was paralyzed with grief, and finally decided that she had to leave her career as an attorney to find a new purpose for her life. In doing so, Bercovici, gave life to the legacy of her daughters passion for the art of dance.

“Grief releases a lot of energy…you can either turn that inward or you can use your energy to give something back. I thought maybe I could do some kind of dance program for the kids in Los Angeles in Gabi’s name,” Bervovici said.

GAEF was nominated for this grant by Roland S. Nebeker, CLU, ChFC, a 26-year member from Murray, Utah.

Nebeker wrote, “They do such wonderful work with inner-city children, they build confidence by changing lives for the better through dance training and performances.”

The MDRT Foundation grant supports the ‘everybody dance!’ program, providing free top-quality dance classes to more than 1,000 under-privileged children in the Los Angeles area. Bercovici’s redirected purpose has grown into a very successful arts program growing from 12 weekly classes to its current schedule of 117 weekly classes in jazz, ballet, hip-hop and modern dance for children between the ages of 4 and 16.