By: Shimmy Blum. A delegation of trailblazers in the orthodox Jewish community’s business and career realm – led by Parnassah Network founder and director Duvi Honig – met with Matt Nosanchuk, the White House’s official Jewish community liaison. Mr. Honig was joined by Chaim Shapiro, assistant director of career services at Touro College and Elliot Lasson, executive director of Job Link of Baltimore.

The meeting came ahead of the upcoming 2014 Parnassah Expo – on March 25th and 26th – and the delegation urged Mr. Nosanchuk to help bring government related business development and career tools to the expo, to help its thousands of attendees take advantage of them. The group explained the intricacies of orthodox community life and how our community often “falls through the cracks” when it comes to the myriad government programs targeted towards business development and job training. “The government needs to focus on economically empowering our community, just as there are various programs targeted towards other ethnic groups,” says Mr. Honig.

They stressed the unbelievable strides that can be made when communities work with each other, as well as with various government and private sector resources, for mutual economic benefit, as evidenced by the delegation itself, whose members fill diverse roles and live in diverse communities.

Mr. Honig stresses that this meeting was merely the first step of a full throated effort to build an effective community-government partnership to help breadwinners support their families. “Members of our community like being successful and self-sufficient, as opposed to relying on government social programs or others,” he says. “B’ezras Hashem, once this year’s expo is wrapped up, we’ll be taking additional bold steps towards achieving that goal.”