In 1994, when was 12 years old, she was sitting in the kitchen when a news broadcast came on - a local homeless shelter had been planning a party for their clients' children, but the shelter had been robbed, and all the gifts were stolen, and Amy felt awful. "So," said her mother, Jacquie Sacks, "What do you want to do about it?"
Amy decided to put all her birthday money into buying new gifts, and the next year, for her bat mitzvah, she decided to host the whole party.
"It just made me feel like I could actually do something," Zeide said. "I actually had the ability, at 13, to make a difference in someone's day, world, moment. We're packing up, and the agency representative that I had organized this with said, 'well are you coming back next year?' I looked at my mom, and was kind of like 'yeah, we'll be there.'"
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The party continued to grow, finding its purpose, its mission, not only in the people who attended the party, but also in those that provided it.
"We realized that there was this opportunity to create a program with this dual mission of providing resources and services for children and families experiencing hardship who needed these things, and empowering these young people to go out, and do the work, and see the impact of it. I think that is what's so important: you can't create community without interacting in it."
This way of thinking led to the foundation of Creating Connected Communities (CCC), which, in addition to Amy's Holiday Party, now runs several other events throughout the year.
The holiday party, however, remains their signature event. It's become so large that it's had to be split in three - with nearly 400 teen volunteers filtering in and out throughout the day.
"It's the best day of the year. It's a million different details, and a million personalities but it is the best day of the year," said Tara Kornblum, who helped initially establish CCC, and was responsible for planning and organizing the day's events.
Teen volunteers were paired with one or more kids at the start of each party, and helped and played with them throughout the day, guiding them wherever they wanted to go, while the parents would take time to enjoy themselves.
Each of the stations quickly lit up with smiling faces. In the main room, off to one side, was a series of arcade games, where a father held up his son to reach the controls, a girl held up her brother so he could try the punching machine, and kids chased the occasional runaway Skee ball. In the front was a dance floor, where the emcee danced the Macarena with volunteers and let a kid come up to rap in front of the crowd, to great applause. Tables filled with Legos, cards, and arts and crafts kits filled the area in between, where volunteers sat with children helping them write words or find the Lego brick they needed. Even those waiting outside the hall for the next party were treated to entertainment, as Spiderman and two princesses, Elsa and Tiana, greeted guests as they came in. In another room, there was a gift boutique for parents, and a chance to take pictures with Santa - but the real highlight was a little room off to the side.
"The toy room is definitely a magical place for the kids," said Julia Promoff, who has volunteered with the party for several years. "Just generally, getting to see the smiles on the kids' faces, that is genuinely the best part."
The children did much more than smile. Upon entering the room, their eyes widened. They looked up at the stacks of toys they got to choose from - in some cases over three times as tall as themselves - and often couldn't contain themselves, with some jumping up and down, or clapping, or literally shaking. One even involuntarily cussed, quickly checking around to make sure no one heard him. A volunteer held up a toddler, too little to stand on her own for long, so she could point at what she wanted. In the back of the room, Chase Satisky had made it her bat mitzvah project to give out the makeup she had collected. This is the latest of the 187 bar/bat mitzvah projects involved with Amy's Holiday Party since its inception. Zeide noted she hopes projects like these will be a good way to get kids involved, not just as a one-off, but the start of something more.
As each party wound down, families would come back together in an outside tent, eating pizza and home baked treats with the volunteers. Daron Beldick, a teen volunteer, and President of CCC's Leadership Development Program, remembered a group he had eaten with years before.
"When we brought them outside, we said 'OK, take your food,' and they asked, 'well how much can we take,' and we said, 'however much you want.' It was really perspective-changing," Beldick said. "They were mind-boggled."
This is also where the youngest volunteers could be found - Amy's nieces and nephews, some as young as 6, who had come to help alongside their grandparents to help.
As the last party wound to a close, Zeide reflected on the tremendous success of the day, which served nearly 1,000 children and more than 500 adults, while hugging her son, himself a teenage volunteer.
"The amount of people that came together, that stayed late, that came early, that filled in to make this happen, and the smiles and the joy that we were able to bring to these kids today," she said, tearing up slightly, "and to have my whole family here - it's amazing."