Sylvia K. Hassenfeld (September 19, 1920 – August 15, 2014) was an American communal leader, philanthropist, human rights advocate, and one of the first women to head a major international Jewish aid organization.
In 1940, Sylvia married Merrill L. Hassenfeld, whose father, Henry, and his uncles Hillel and Herman, had founded Hasbro toys in 1923, and moved to Providence, Rhode Island.
In this position, she helped to found the International Development Program (IDP), a non-sectarian emergency aid organization, in response to the December 1988 Armenian earthquake.
The charter flights bringing severely injured earthquake victims to Israel marked the first time that the JDC offered crisis help to non-Jews.
She received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Brandeis University in 1998 in “recognition of her leadership, activism and philanthropy.”[6] She was made an Honorary Citizen of Jerusalem, a presidential appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, was awarded the 1994 Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award by the American Jewish Historical Society, and was honored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.