Where The Money Goes

The NY Ride supports Hazon's work and that of our partners. The heart of what we're about is summed up in our mission statement:

Hazon's mission is to revitalize Jewish life, to foster new vision and to encourage Jews, as Jews, to live healthier and more environmentally sustainable lives.

Through our Jewish Environmental Bike Rides and a range of other programs that engage contemporary issues through a Jewish lens, we build inclusive community, foster people's Jewish and life journeys and engender love and respect for Jewish tradition and for the physical world around us.

Hazon brings joy and meaning to people's lives and provides new vision for the Jewish people's ancient mission to celebrate life and perfect the world.

What does this mean, in practice? The New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride is changing the world and people's lives in myriad ways. To see a complete list of the projects funded by the Ride, click here. To get a sense of what we're accomplishing, here are five examples of how rider fundraising made a real difference:

• In 2004, one third of the income on the Garden of Eve Farm (on the North Fork of Long Island) came from Tuv Ha'Aretz. We launched Tuv Ha'Aretz, our Community-Supported Agriculture program, in June 2004 with funds from the NY Ride. The 80 or so members that participated in Tuv Ha'Aretz not only ate well, but actively supported supported Eve and Chris' work to grow organic produce that's healthy, pesticide-free, and easy on the earth. More
• Twelve Jews in their 20s spent the summer and fall at Isabella Freedman, growing food organically and exploring Judaism and spirituality in the context of the natural world. They lived in a house purchased with money from the 2003 Ride (we actually used Ride monies to pay the down payment) and 2004 monies went towards the costs of the ADAMAH program.
  "ADAMAH has reconnected me in a really strong way to Judaism, in a way I didn't expect," said Sarah Appelby, a 2004 ADAMAH fellow. More
• Jewish and Arab students (Israeli, Palestinian and North American) are learning about how to protect their environment and make peace in the Middle East at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.
  "I now understand that Arabs and Jews have strong connections to the land and a strong will to survive as a people; I also understand that the solution will have to be creative and complex. As a graduate of the AIES program, I believe that by meeting each other and working together we can find a way. I know that me and my classmates are committed to trying," said Layla, a Moslem Palestinian/Jordanian graduate student.
  Ride proceeds also help bring Israeli and Palestinian students to teach at the NY Ride and during the year. We used Ride proceeds to enable Dima Halawani and Ilana Meallem to come and peak at our Tu B'Shvat Seder and elsewhere in January 2005. More
• The direct human impact of our Rides can be powerful. Numbers of participants have made life changes of all sorts—becoming active cyclists, vegans, or working in the Jewish environmental field. After doing the Cross-USA Ride in 2000, Ilan Glazer (an extreme example!) became a vegan, decided he wanted to work in the Jewish environmental field and went to work at the Teva Learning Center, and elsewhere. More
• Hazon supports the work of the Sustainable Development Project of SPNI Jerusalem. Proceeds from the Ride bought garden tools for the recently created urban garden at the Old Leper Hospital in Jerusalem, where a wide variety of groups (including kids, adults and the developmentally disabled) can work in the garden. More

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Project List

20% of the proceeds of the Ride go towards covering the Ride's direct costs. (We're able to keep this figure low thanks to the support of our sponsors, led by the Dorot Foundation. Huge thanks to all our sponsors. And we don't consider this money "wasted,"–it goes towards enabling a potentially life-changing experience, which is enormously educationally important.

Although 20% of the Ride's proceeds goes towards the Ride's costs, fully 100% of the Rides' proceeds make the world a better place. Here's where some of the other 80% goes:

HAZON PROJECTS

Tuv Ha'Aretz
Our Community-Supported Agriculture program was launched with money from the 2003 Ride at Ansche Chesed in June 2004, and, with proceeds from the 2004 Ride, expanded to JCC MetroWest in New Jersey for summer 2005. In supporting local organic agriculture, we're having a measurable environmental impact as well as being a powerful tool for strengthening the Jewish community and a real invitation to its members to engage seriously with issues of kashrut, contemprary food systems and Jewish environmental responsibility. To read more about Tuv Ha'Aretz, click here.

Hazon Fellows
We use some of the Ride proceeds to support our Hazon Fellows program. The intent of the Fellowship is to staff Hazon with outstanding young Jewish innovators and leaders, and to expose them, in a supportive environment, to more responsibility and direct leadership experience than would be the case in traditional Jewish organizations, so that leaders of tomorrow are receiving on the ground experience and support today. Current Hazon Fellows are Daniella Halstuch and Anna Stevenson. More

Hazon Rabbinic Fellows Program
We hire a rabbinical student to work part-time during the year and full-time during the summer, so that they can apply their rabbinical training in a way that seeks to integrate Jewish learning with experiential and environmental education. It's vital to help support a generation of rabbis who see the value of outdoor and environmental education and who are able to inspire a healthier and more environmentally-aware Jewish community. Last year's Rabbinic Fellow was Edie Meyerson, and our current Rabbinic Fellow is Ariana Silverman, a student at HUC.

MAIN PARTNERS

ADAMAH / Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center
As we hope you'll see when you do the Ride, Freedman is a beautiful "green" retreat center in Falls Village, CT, boasting composting toilets, bathroom linoleum made from corn, and low-energy compact fluorescent lighting and other green building initiatives that reflect Freedman's commitment to environmental stewardship as a core Jewish value.

Freedman hosts ADAMAH, a leadership training program for Jewish young adults that teaches the vital connection between Judaism and environmental stewardship that was launched with critical support from the Ride. Through a six-month residential program, Adamah Fellows live communally and engage in a hands-on curriculum that integrates organic agriculture and sustainable living skills, Jewish learning and living, leadership development, and community building. The program strengthens participants' Jewish identity and commitment to tikkun olam through immersion in an ecologically sustainable, spiritually vibrant, and intergenerationally-connected Jewish community, while exposing countless others to a traditionally rooted yet entirely new way of Jewish living.

The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES)
AIES is a regional center for environmental leadership. By encouraging environmental cooperation between people, the Arava Institute is working towards peace and sustainable development on a regional and global scale. Their work on regional environmental protection, which starts from the assumption that the environment of the Middle East is affected and shared by all of its inhabitants, and that pollutants and extreme weather patterns don't follow political or religious boundaries, is in fact doing some of the most meaningful work towards peace and cooperation in the Middle East.

We work closely with AIES through the year, and we partner with them on the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride: Cycling for Peace, Partnership & Environmental Protection. Supporting AIES is a way both to protect Israel's environment and, more broadly, to help support a new generation of Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians who'll work together to build peace.

PARTNERS

Proceeds from the Ride also support a range of other Jewish environmental organizations that are doing great work for the Jewish community and the planet as a whole. Grants to these organizations are awarded by the NY Ride Allocations Committee in October/November after the Ride. This year, for the first time, we'll invite organizations to submit written grant applications. We expect this year that our grant recipients overall will be similar to previous years:

Jewish organizations in the US

• American Jewish World Service
• Canfei Nesharim
• The Shalom Nature Center
• Partners In Creation
• The Teva Learning Center

Organizations in Israel

• Heschel Center for Environmental Leadership
• Kibbutz Lotan
• SPNI Jerusalem
• Green Zionist Alliance

Other organizations

• Adventure Cycling
• Green Restaurant Association
• Hudson Valley Sustainable Communities Network
• Just Food
• Sierra Club
• Transportation Alternatives

To see the proceeds of the 2004 NY Ride, click here.