Raising money to provide food, clothing, furniture, car seats, and tutoring for the welfare recipients assigned to specific caseworkers.
Congregation provides holiday meals and gifts to less fortunate families in their area.
Congregation re-envisioned its food drive by requesting non-perishables by assigned first letter.
Local clergy work together to create an inter-religious coalition to combat homophobia.
Initiative to educate community about issues of gun control, safety measures and awareness.
Congregation fundraises to help members of a small Ugandan synagogue.
Congregation built a house with Habitat for Humanity
A synagogue's initiative to aid and assist children who are ill and are in need of support. They host three annual events at a local area Hospital and they encourage as many temple members and children as possible to participate in order to foster one-on-one relationships with the patients.
Creation of charitable centerpieces for a B'nei Mitzvah celebration.
Volunteers are trained to tutor local students.
A program designed to sensitize the congregation's youth to anti-Semitism and racism develops into a multicultural dialogue program.
The Temple participated in an interfaith youth trip to Nicaragua with a local Presbyterian Church. They helped build homes and spent time caring for the Nicaraguan children.
Congregation sends non-perishable kosher food to hungry Jews in Ukraine.
A program providing support and training for adult children of the frail and elderly.
Congregants throw a holiday party at a center for children with emotional and cognitive deficits.
Synagogue sponsors an annual charity 5K walk/run.
Congregation provides social welfare services to alleviate the devastating effects of poverty on the community.
Congregation sponsors an annual Christmas Dinner for their local homeless, distributing meals, toys and care packages to families in need.
Synagogue members cut coupons to donate to agencies that purchase food for the needy.
Congregants volunteer regularly at local soup kitchens.
A synagogue's attempt to expand the work of its social action committee by increasing the number of Temple members involved in social justice programming, the number of programs involving other faith groups, and the numbers of programs addressing poverty issues in the local area.
The Temple put social action as the centerpiece of its culture. By creating on-going programs in many different areas the congregation enables its members to be involved in many different areas of Social Action work.
Congregation “adopts” a school in a poverty-stricken neighborhood.
Genocidal acts are taking place in Sudan’s Darfur region even as we gather around our Seder tables this spring. To again help bring Pesach teachings to bear on a current moral crisis, the 2005 If Not Us Who Committee (INUW) of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury MA takes Darfur as the theme of this Passover Companion.
On designated day, participants were asked to wear “Stop the Genocide in Sudan” T-shirts around town.
Grassroots, community-wide advocacy and relief effort to raise awareness about genocidal conditions in Darfur, Sudan.
City-wide program supporting HIV/AIDS support organizations by eating out at specific restaurants.
The Temple has built a strong social action program which has seeked to mazimize opportunities for members to be involved.
“Dolls for Darfur” was a national advocacy campaign designed to raise awareness about, and bring an end to, the atrocities being committed in Darfur. Dolls for Darfur provides congregations, camps, and other interested groups with postcards and tiny dolls that represent individuals who have lost their lives in Darfur, as well as detailed instructions and materials for lobbying elected officials and curriculum ideas for educated our youth.
A congregation's commitment to Social Action initiated two comprehensive projects. The first was an annual three-day trip for underprivileged students which takes place at URJ Greene Family Camp. The second project, which was done as a fund-raising effort, the committee began offering intra-congregational shalach manot baskets, thereby performing the mitzvah of sending food packages to friends and relatives on Purim. In addition to these projects, the Steering Committee created the Mitzvah Messengers program to encourage the congregation's children to become involved in the community.
Fill your mishloach manot baskets with Fair Trade products and create a more just and sustainable world while enjoying tasty treats.
Congregants provides monthly dinner to residents of a local apartment complex for citizens with physical disabilities.
To ensure a coordinated volunteer effort, a proactive committee was formed encompassing representatives from Brotherhood, WRJ-Sisterhood, Youth Group, and the congregation as a whole. This clearing house identifies community needs, organizes and coordinates activities and involves as many congregants as possible in social action projects.
Congregants bring the “spirit of Christmas” to needy families through gift-giving and by hosting an annual Christmas dinner.
Tzedekah collective to fund a variety of projects throughout the year.
A social action program where funding and supporting a religious school congregation in the Former Soviet Union is done.
A congregation's social action program which enables temple family members to participate in such programs, focused on inner-city residents. These intensified efforts resulted in greater participation in synagogue social action in and around the congregation.
A congregation's initiative that focused on three programs that have been particularly successful: a homeless shelter for men to assist them and offer support; an AIDS education program; Mitzvah Day program which supported and helped the wider community in meaningful and profound ways.
The Temple Israel Board of Directors and Social Action Committee decided to work with the College of St. Scholastica to purchase stoves for Darfur refugees in the Toulomb refugee camp.
Congregation involves local Jews in building a house with Habitat for Humanity.
Congregation feeds the hungry in the local community.
A synagogue and an African American Baptist Church united to create an after-school academic enrichment program.
Youth prepare weekly lunches for the homeless.
Congregants provide support services for HIV/AIDS patients and their families.
Volunteers augment donated food at the Inspiration Cafe, cook, and serve one Thursday evening a month. Every Saturday, volunteers pick up day-old goods at a local grocery store and distribute it to local agencies.
Congregation collaborates with a local church and a local mosque for its annual Mitzvah Day.
The congregation continues to do tikkun olam projects through partnerships with various churches and other inter-faith groups throughout the year.
Congregation creates a safe space for homeless families.
Interfaith program to assist and foster care parents and children.
The Temple created a tuition free learning center that allows the economically disadvantaged to gain important job skills allowing them to move towards economic self-suffiency.
A synagogue's Social Action Committee has implemented an ongoing program of tikkun olam. The synagogue creates year-round programs, demonstrating the congregant's unwavering commitment to those is need, at home or abroad.
Integrates Passover observance with combating hunger by partnering with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.
Many congregants’ homes experienced serious destruction. The Social Action committee responded by formulating a plan for the congregants’ immediate and long term needs.
The goal of the “March for Dafur” program was, and still is, educating our community about the genocidal conditions in Darfur. Its purpose is to create awareness leading to advocacy.
A weekly brown-bag lunch program for children at a neghbouring daycare center.
The Temple creates "Mitzvah baskets" which are baskets filled with non-perishable food items that decorate the sanctuary during B'nai Mitzvah and other special occasions.
The synagogue created a Mitzvah Day Carnival in which the most vulnerable children received a happy and carefree afternoon at the Temple. Children of immigrants and those with Down's Syndrome partook in the carnival and were welcomed to an afternoon diversion by Temple members.
A congregation's Mitzvah Day initiative which has turned its efforts to a Mitzvah Weekend, educating and learning about the weekend's theme: Foster Children. The Mitzvah Weekend began at Friday night services with a speaker, who updated congregants on the status of the local state's foster care system. The next morning, congregants met for a panel discussion that outlined the needs of foster children in the local area.
A coming together of various multicultural groups participating in a broad range of activities in order to infuse social action programs in the local area.
A synagogue's initiative to infuse the key facets of their congregation's synagogue life, including life-cycle events, youth education, adult learning, worship, and the capital campaign with social justice, learning, and action.
The synagogue runs a homeless shelter from November until April in which guests are given a hot meal, a warm bed to sleep in, and a breakfast in the morning.
The Temple works to provide shelter for the homeless and needy one night a week during the long winter months. They provide warm meals, a place to sleep, and breakfast in the morning for those who need to take shelter in the synagogue.
A congregation's community outreach program to support an impoverished community in rural America by using Maimonides' injunction that the highest form of tzedakah is to help people help themselves.
The synagogue proves that bigger is not necessarily better! As a small synagogue, they were able to acheive significant results in the community through disaster relief programs, food drives, hosting a shelter, and an Intergenerational Mitzvah Day.
The congregation developed an overall social action program where the values of social justice were included in worship, study, communal activities, and board discussions. From these discussions, they devloped a comprehensive social action program that involved hundreds of congregants during the year.
The Temple seeked "to strip away all the excuses people have for not participating in social action" by offering its members an unusally wide array of social action opportunities.
A synagogue's Social Action Committee's partnership with Legal Services to help impoverished clients work towards self-sufficiency.
Three-part program educating the Jewish and GLBT communities about homosexual victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
A congregation's partnership with Pioneer Valley Project, whose aim it is to empower low-income and working-class communities to participate in the economic development of the region at every level, from new enterprise ventures to job retention during plant closings, to city and regional policy making. The central goal within this mission is to revitalize the manufacturing sector of the economy to generate good jobs at decent wages.
Project Ezra is a non-profit organization that serves the Jewish elderly of the Lower East Side in New York City.
A synagogue's initiative which strives to improve the basic living standards of impoverished families who live in sub-standard conditions in Mexico. Temple members feel motivated to continue this work because providing shelter and helping others work toward self-sufficiency fulfills an important Jewish value.
This project is now in its third year at Congregation Shir Tikvah (Troy, MI). Congregants provide Chanukah gifts to less fortunate children, seniors and homeless adults in their community in a very personal way.
A synagogue's initiative to infuse social action to its congregants by compelling the congregants, including its youth, to speak out and become involved in the Temple's activities. Temple members have been involved in an AIDS lunch program, repairing homes, collection of food and clothing projects, as well as various other social action programs and advocacy work.
Teens in grades 7-12 across the state went door-to-door on the evening of October 31, Halloween, “trick-or-treating” for canned goods to donate to local shelters.
The synagogue's goals are to dismantle racism and economic injustice. They do this by working with other inter-faith groups, by mentoring at local schools, by helping out at Habitat for Humanity, and in many other ways.
The synagogue worked together with other interfaith groups to help those people who suffer from poverty and homelessness. They set-up a tent city as well as created a program to allow the homeless the ability to rent their own apartments.
This congregation worked in partnership with Na Me Res (A First Nations organization) to commit itself to respond to homelessness.
The synagogue worked together with other community members to help revitalize a Day Care Center in the inner-city.
A congregation's inspiring program to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the local community and to bring about support, healing, and comfort to those affected. The synagogue's Social Action Committee created a unique Haggadah, enumerating the plagues that hinder liberation from AIDS. This initiative has become an empowering vehicle through which many temple members have put their Jewish values to work.
A monthly endeavour to collect various items to benefit organizations that provide aid and assistance to people in need. These organizations serve the homeless and people of all faiths.
The Temple sponsored a "sock hop" in which the admission fee was one package of socks, t-shirts, or underpants which were donated to various homeless shelters.
The Temple partnered with two churches in the South Bronx in order to foster connections between the communities. Through tutoring, blood drives, homeless shelters, and other means, the communities have worked together through iner-faith relations to help make our world a better place.
A synagogue co-partners with a local Presbyterian Church and other supporting congregations and organizations in a program to take working homeless families through proscribed steps or phases to make them self-sufficient.
A congregation's commitment to moral and social issues working in a variety of different agencies to raise funds to pay stipends for young people to do volunteer work in various community agencies such as nursing homes, camps, facilities for the disabled, and youth recreation programs.
Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking brought awareness on the issue of human trafficking to the community.
World Food Day occurs in the middle of October. Certain restaurants will donate 7% of their proceeds on that day to fight hunger. Work with your local synagogue and restaurants to help end hunger in your city!
A congregation's inspiring sense of community responsibility through their devotion to The Friendship House, a homeless shelter for abused women, children at risk, migrant workers, and the working poor, and the Sunrise Community, an agency for the developmentally compromised adults. The community's efforts were focused on three comprehensive projects: La Casa, a thrift store opened to help the Friendship House community become more self-sufficient, Breast Cancer Awareness, and the Annual Christmas Eve/Chanukah Party celebration.
The Giving Tree is an annual gift-giving program that benefits children, families, and seniors that would not normally have the funds to celebrate the holidays. This program has blossomed into a year-round programming project benefiting over 2,000 people.
The Temple has been able to transform its Mitzvah Day into a year-round opportunity for social action.
A congregation's initiative to help and assist the homeless. The community works in tandem with a local church two to four times a year to house homeless families for a week, supplying shelter, meals, supplies and emotional support. This congregation became a leading homeless advocate in its area by encouraging four other congregations to support the shelter.
A synagogue's initiative to work with the local Interfaith Shelter Network over the Christmas holiday to provide assistance to those who need the support.
The Potato Project works to save millions of pounds of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other products that are wasted in the fields.
Temple members fulfill a mitzvah by picking up complimentary bottles of shampoo when traveling on vacation. Afterwards the collected items are donated to an area homeless shelter.
Raise awareness of captive Israeli soldiers by leaving 3 chairs open at community events.
The Temple created a Tikkun Olam project for every grade of the religious school. In this way, students learned Jewish texts throughout the year, were involved in the project with their families, and were able to build ongoing relationships with other Temple families.
The Temple revamped its Social Action Committee by creating pledge cards in which congregants can indicate which type of Social Action projects they are interesting in doing and how often they are available to do them.
A congregation's initiative to enthuse congregants to participate in community service projects. All of the projects, though, served to make Temple members more responsive to the needs of the community and to make the Temple more of a part of the community.
A congregation's Tzedakah Collective demonstrates the synagogue's dedication to social justice through its various activities.
A new and successful program to educate congregants about diverse disaster relief initiatives and to raise funds to support people in need throughout the world.
During the High Holy Days and following month, congregation collects packages of underwear to distribute to local homeless community.
The Temple began a program in which congregants teach what they know best to homeless residents at a neighborhood shelter. In addition, the Temple created a library for the homeless shelter and formed a tutoring program.
The Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, NJ, held a one-day (6 hour) event in April 2006 to raise awareness of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan while simultaneously raising $62,000 for humanitarian aid. Congregants, as well as members of the larger community, mobilized to obtain sponsors and sign up for time on various pieces of exercise equipment in order to walk, run, ride, or jump for Darfur.
A synagogue can work to gather cold weather garments for area homeless shelters.
Temple Dor Dorim cultivated meaningful personal and communal relationships with two local churches, creating the foundation for genuine interfaith collaboration on a series of events aimed at the entire local community and designed to raise awareness of the suffering in Darfur, as well as within our own communities.
Congregation creates a year’s worth of programs and opportunities to think about and do tzedakah.
Congregants sign up for three month commitments to buy an extra can of food each time they shop. Donations are brought to the Temple and donated to local food banks.
