The Cause – Where the Ride Proceeds Go
Mini-Grant Recipients Announced!
How does supporting Riders make an impact on Hazon and on sustainability issues in the Jewish community?
- 60-70% of the proceeds fund Hazon’s year round food programs including our Food Audit, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiative and the Hazon Food Conference.
- 10-15% is awarded as grants to external organizations and programs that share Hazon’s mission. These include are major partners as well as a series of mini grants. Previously funded projects include farming fellowships, solar-powered installations at synagogues, and gardens at Jewish institutions.
- 20-25% of rider fundraising help cover the costs of the ride, which also includes the educational programming associated with the Shabbat retreat. Through these sessions, participants learn about the intersection of Jewish tradition and sustainability, and how they can promote these values in their home communities.
Supporting Hazon’s Food and Education Programs
Hazon creates healthier and more sustainable communities in the Jewish world and beyond. We are at the forefront of putting environmental sustainability on the agenda of the Jewish community – and the wider world. Since 2000, we have worked tirelessly to educate people, to encourage young leaders, to support cutting-edge new projects, and in aggregate to enable and encourage the Jewish community to increase their impact on environmental issues.
As Jews, we have been thinking about kosher food – about what is “fit” to eat – for nearly 3,000 years. A growing number of people today realize that our food choices have significant ramifications – for ourselves, our nation and the world around us. Consumers are more aware that most of the food that they purchase from the grocery store travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to table, costing us millions in transportation fuel costs and packaging. Hazon is playing a lead-role in rallying the Jewish community to put Jewish purchasing power behind healthy and sustainable eating and food-growing – and in doing so, we are adding a new and vital chapter to the story of Jews thinking seriously about what and how we eat.
Many of Hazon’s current programs were started with a seed grant from Ride proceeds, including our Community-Supported Agriculture program and the annual Food Conference.
Two new initiatives which will be funded by the 2012 California Ride include:
The Hazon Food Audit: A toolkit that is designed specifically for Jewish institutions, which helps institutions to evaluate their current food policies and practices. The food audit serves as a resource for improving institutions food sustainability and involves the institution in implementing a plan.
Sustainable Holiday Resources: These tools help individuals and institutions think about sustainable issues as they relate to the cycle of holidays throughout the year. These include tips on how to green your Shabbat table, ways to relate to the agricultural roots of some of the Jewish holidays, and ideas to create programming.
Major Partners
The California Ride has a relationship with two major partners. The major partner organizations receive large grants and in return, the staff of each partner program enriches the programming and spirit of the California Ride.
The major partners for the 2012 California Ride include:
Urban Adamah
Urban Adamah is a three-month leadership development program for young adults that integrates urban organic farming, social justice work and progressive Jewish living and learning. Urban Adamah fellows operate an organic farm and educational center in Berkeley, CA, while interning with community-based social justice organizations addressing issues at the intersection of poverty, food security and environmental stewardship.
Wilderness Torah
Wilderness Torah revitalizes Jewish life by reconnecting Jewish traditions to the cycles of nature. Wilderness Torah facilitates individual spiritual growth, strengthens multi-generational community, and connects people to nature through land-based festivals, rites of passage, and sustainable life skills education.
Mini Grants
Each year a series of smaller grants are distributed to organizations and projects which share Hazon’s mission.
Below is a list of Mini-Grant recipients from this year’s California Ride:
Berkeley Midrasha/Netivot Shalom
Midrasha, partnering with one of our sponsoring congregations, Netivot Shalom, is adding an experiential Jewish nature initiative to our current offerings. Our first event in this effort is to take 12 to 30 teens on a Shabbat backpacking trip April 27-29. This trip will be open to all Jewish teens in the East Bay with an interest in spending a weekend in the wilderness. Participants will challenge themselves physically and experience the serenity and self-discovery that comes with time in nature. Concepts and experiences will include: Jewish spirituality, text study, environmental education, hands on outdoors experiences, team/group building, embracing diversity and confidence building activities. We anticipate this trip becoming a regular part of the Midrasha program and growing over the years.
Camp Newman Kibbutz Yarok
Operation Kibbutz Yarok (OKY) is URJ Camp Newman’s ecological mini-farm. Kibbutz Yarok is deeply inspired by Kibbutz Lotan’s Center for Creative Ecology. Similar to Lotan, the beauty of Kibbutz Yarok is that it is a space where young people are co-creators in the project — preparing the garden, caring for livestock, building with natural and recycled materials, and seeing their own ideas sprout and take form. Caring for the earth requires work of the hands and the heart, and through this labor, campers can feel a strong sense of connection to themselves, to one another, and to Jewish tradition.
Newman’s Avodah campers, entering high-school juniors, rotate working at OKY throughout the summer to develop the site from the ground-up. This summer is the first summer that twenty Avodahniks will be sleeping out at Kibbutz Yarok (one mile from main camp) for two weeks at a time. This is a major step in transitioning OKY into a complete summer session, in which campers will be cooking, eating, working, playing, cleaning, praying, sleeping and waking– all on site. In order to accommodate roughly ten boys and ten girls, OKY needs suitable sleeping quarters. California regulation prohibits building permanent structures on the site. To satisfy the building codes and the camp’s needs, we have chosen geodesic dome camping tents. Domes are structurally sound, space efficient, and beautiful in design. Investing in these tents will be a huge contribution to the kibbutz, allowing the existing funds to remain focused on the farm and farm-labor.
Shomrei Torah
Shomrei Torah ECEC is creating a “Jewish” garden for its preschool through religious school student body in an effort to expose our children to their culture and heritage through food. Using the 5 senses as a pedagogical approach to curriculum, we will set up diverse and reflective garden spaces that grow every Jewish holiday herb, vegetable, fruit and spice. In teaching our children how to work together to plant the soil, weed, water and nurture healthy life, we will be feeding their minds with the necessity of sustainability. While we harvest and cook, they will learn about the importance of whole food nutrition. As we work together teaching our youngest members the value of hard work and respect for the earth, we will nourish their Jewish souls and ensure the preservation of our cultural values, and ultimately, the creation of conscientious Jewish adults.
Beth El
Congregation Beth El is a Reform synagogue serving 500 member families in the Berkeley, Oakland, Albany and El Cerrito neighborhoods. We are committed to building and sustaining a caring synagogue community by welcoming Jews of all backgrounds, encouraging innovation to sustain Jewish spiritual life, celebrating the diversity of our members, encouraging the study of Torah, pursuing social action and engaging in respectful dialogue about Israel.
Beth El is building a congregational garden to be used throughout the year with our camp, school programs and family education activities. With the help of an architect, the garden has been designed to serve as an outdoor classroom, that surrounds the participants in a world of nature.
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is one part indie Shabbat community, one part San Francisco experiment, and one part tool kit for DIY Jewish practice. We’re building a connected, spiritually alive Jewish generation and a new resonant approach to religious life in San Francisco. We believe that Jewish religious practice can transform: It can change lives, make meaning, and invest people in the world.
The Kitchen generates waste during our regular Friday night dinners due to our using compostable paper goods. The Kitchen would like to create a more sustainable, long term solution. Our plan is to purchase reusable napkins, glasses, plates and (hopefully, gently used) flatware. Our volunteers will continue to partner with dish washing staff to wash dishes following dinner. Creating this change will help The Kitchen minimize its waste and practice our held religious beliefs in protecting the environment.
Amir
Amir is a nonprofit organization dedicated to alleviating issues of social justice through youth
development and community building. We harness the educational power of gardening to inspire and motivate people to serve others. By recruiting and training young Jewish adults to build community gardens at summer camps, we are significantly increasing the number of youth dedicated to building a more just and loving world.
This summer, Amir will work with ten Jewish summer camps to build educational community gardens. From June 4th to 8th Amir will host a training seminar for the 45 young Jewish adults (farmers) that will lead these community garden projects. The training will take place at Capital Camps and Retreat Center. At this training, Amir will teach its farmers how to build large-scale organic gardens and how to run educational programming in, and around, these gardens. In addition, Amir will bring in guest speakers and other lay leaders to speak to its farmers about future career and service opportunities in the field of Jewish environmentalism. To train and guide its farmers, Amir will develop a sourcebook that includes a comprehensive gardening manual and program bank.
