Chanukah 2018 is officially in the books. It is time to clean the wax out of your menorah, wipe the splattered oil off your stove top and try to forget how many jelly doughnuts you have eaten this week. It’s a time of giving, light and coming together to celebrate your community, and even though Chanukah is over the giving doesn’t need to end. JumpSpark is working everyday creating the sparks to enrich the Jewish teen landscape in Atlanta, and we are just getting started.
In October of this year, JumpSpark announced its first foray into grant giving with the Spark Collaboration Grants. Collaboration is essential for a building the culture of innovation needed to raise the level of engagement for our community teens. Therefore, we offered $1000 grants for any educator, professional or organization that met the following requirements:
- Innovative teen (9th-12th grade) programming that expands the current programmatic landscape.
- Ideas that rethink what it means to prepare Jewish teens for life.
- Engaging and unique collaborations with Jewish or secular partners.
- Spaces that are pluralistic and radically welcoming.
- High-level Jewish learning and community building opportunities
Out of the proposals we received, JumpSpark is funding 6 amazing new collaborations for Atlanta’s teens in the 2018-2019 school year. These collaborations bring together 11 Jewish organizations in our city and have the potential to engage 1000+ of our community teens.
In addition to $1,000, grant winners will receive programmatic support, educational consultation and marketing assistance from JumpSpark.
Congratulations to the recipients!
Winners: NFTY-SAR & The Temple
Program: Jewish Values at NFTY-SAR Fall Kallah
The first of these grantees to run the first week in November, this program brought 200 teens to Atlanta’s premier cultural institutions including The Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coke and CNN to see how Jewish values are reflected in our city.
Adam Griff, Senior Regional Director for NFTY-SAR said, “We were lucky and fortunate to partner with JumpSpark, and the Spark grant we received allowed us to do this innovative, off-site programming.”
Winners: NFTY-SAR & BBYO
Program: Teen Micro-Grant Fellowship
These two youth organizations are offering their Spark Grant to teams of NFTY & BBYO members who will work in partnership to create new programs for their less engaged peers. Teens in the program will be mentored by professional staff and receive training to learn how to develop and implement their ideas.
Winners: NFTY-SAR & 7 Atlanta Reform Congregations
Program: Spark Ambassadors
This Spark Grant is providing scholarships for teens to be Atlanta Spark Ambassadors to the 2019 NFTY Convention; after they return, each Ambassador will be responsible for hosting a pop-up event to bring an element of what they learned or or were inspired by at NFTY Convention to their peers.
Winners: NFTY-SAR & Hillels of Georgia
Program: Ma’avar at NFTY-SAR Spring Kallah
NFTY is partnering with Hillels of Georgia to fund guest speakers at NFTY-SAR Spring Kallah and elevate the opportunities for high school juniors and seniors as they transition, or ma’avar, to college.
Winners: American Jewish Committee (AJC) Atlanta and Southeast Jewish Camps
Program: AJC LFT at Camp
AJC and four Southeast camps (Barney Medintz, Coleman, Judaea and Ramah Darom) will create a one-time Jewish and Israel advocacy program for high school campers modeled after AJC’s Leaders for Tomorrow (LFT) year-long Israel advocacy and leadership training course.
Winners: The Weber School & 6 Points Sports Academy
Program: Women’s Sports Clinic
Weber and 6 Points Sports will partner to run a day-long sports clinic for teenage females in the Atlanta area, offering different sport options and bringing in professional coaches to help lead the girls through skills, drills and leadership training sessions.
Seeing the amazing impact micro-grants could have in our community, JumpSpark is stepping it up with our next project: large-scale strategic investments into the Jewish teen ecosystem called Spark Grants that can create new programs, fund new initiatives, support programmatic growth or rethink existing models.
Do you think you’re sitting on the next big thing for Atlanta? Are you ready to finally take that risk you’ve been dreaming of? Let’s think big and build something together! Apply at jumpsparkatl.org/jumpspark-grant-application.
