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Federation Innovation

jewishatl
In Atlanta Jewish Community, Caring, Federation Innovation, Innovation, People in Need, Philanthropy

Mental Health Responder Toolkit

Imagine if more people re-thought mental illness as a quest for mental and spiritual wellness. Imagine if more people had the tools to understand, support, and overcome the shame, stigma, and challenges of substance abuse. Now, with support from a Federation Innovation Propel grant, Atlanta-based Blue Dove Foundation is moving in exactly that direction, addressing issues of mental illness and substance abuse through a compassionate Jewish lens. Blue Dove works locally and beyond to educate, equip, and ignite our Jewish community with tools to understand mental illness and substance abuse and connect them with the right local resources, such as professionals from JFC&S. They are in the midst of creating a Mental Health Toolkit packed with resources and written by local rabbis and health professionals, to increase understanding and extend hands of healing.

Blue Dove’s Toolkit begins by articulating Jewish mental health values and defines the key issues that individuals and families struggle with. For example, the concept of b’tzelem elohim — to be created in the divine image — suggests that any conversation about mental wellness must begin with a foundation of dignity and respect. This can counter the shame of illness and the tendency to hide from conversations around mental health.

Or, refuah shleimah — healing and wholeness. Judaism recognizes that healing is not just physical; it is holistic. When we pray the misheberach for healing, we pray for refuat hanefesh v’refuat haguf, a healing of spirit and of body. The Jewish emphasis is also on healing, not on curing. Even when mental illness is under control, healing and a return to wholeness are in order. We see healing as a process, one that has many components and may be a lifelong journey.

The Toolkit will also provide a comprehensive list of local resources to recognize, respond, and set people on the road to healing.  The hope is that people will become more comfortable talking openly about mental health, mental wellness, and illness. Learn more at Blue Dove Foundation.

jewishatl
In Atlanta Jewish Community, Federation Innovation, Innovation, Philanthropy

Tradition Kitchens

Julia Levy’s Tradition Kitchens’ Hands-on Learning Programs

At Hanukkah, when the latkes sizzle, Tradition Kitchens celebrates both the classics and the modern — the gluten free, Southern sweet potato with leek latkes and organic pepper jelly garnish from Ivy Rose Farm, a family venture with Jewish roots.

This is our first Hanukkah with Tradition Kitchens, our mother-daughter start-up transforming kitchens into classrooms to connect cultures, generations and neighborhoods. By empowering home chefs and restaurateurs to teach family recipes with history, we host pop-up affordable cooking classes around Atlanta, from intown to the suburbs.

When we think of food, we think of family. This year, we’ve been learning our Jewish Atlanta family’s favorite foods and the stories behind them — Noodle Kugel with Leslie Kalick Wolfe’s mother’s recipe, Challah with Sara Franco, Molly’s Mandel Bread with Michele Glazer Hirsh and Jennifer Glazer Malkin —to name just a few. And we’ve been welcomed into the Federation family as PROPEL Innovation grantees with a cohort, coach, ecosystem of Jewish organizations across the city, mentors, workshops with Zingerman’s Deli and so much more.

Along the way, we’ve discovered a treasure trove of Atlanta Jewish recipes — some scribbled down between friends and others recorded in beautiful cookbooks by The Breman Museum and Congregation Or Ve Shalom. We strive to elevate the foods that have thrived for generations and put Atlanta on the Jewish food map while also discovering the home chefs whose delicious dishes should be shared. Our goal is to create community through our gatherings and build upon it organically.

As you sit down for a Hanukkah holiday meal — whether it’s with family or friends — our winter wish is simply to ask about the story behind the food. And if you’re inspired by what you discover, as we have been, send the story our way and nominate the home cook to teach. We hope to sample old and new culinary traditions with you in 2020.

jewishatl
In Federation Innovation, Innovation, Philanthropy

Propel Grant Recipients

Drum Roll, Please: Propel Grant Winners Announced!
Federation Innovation received an impressive 45 proposals for its PROPEL Innovation Grant and has just announced ten awards ranging from $10K-$25K, totaling in a community investment of almost $200K. PROPEL’s goal is to help launch transformative, creative and scalable projects that reimagine Jewish life in Atlanta. Representatives from Federation’s Innovation and Community Planning & Impact Committees reviewed the applications and invited a select number of applicants for interviews. We’re so proud to share and celebrate with you next year’s class of Jewish Atlanta Changemakers! Meet the 10 projects funded:

  • Hillel Georgia Tech – TOM (Tikkun Olam Makers)
    Engaging Georgia Tech and the larger Jewish community, TOM aims to innovate assistive devices for those with disabilities through a three-day makeathon. The goal is to partner need-knowers (with a disability) and makers to help develop innovative solutions.
  • AgeWell Atlanta – Information and Referral Concierge
    Atlanta is home to one of the fastest growing senior communities in the country. Most older adults prefer to stay in their own homes as they age, which increases the need for a coordinated system of care. This grant will enable AgeWell Atlanta to respond by creating a centralized concierge, which older adults and caregivers can access a coordinated continuum of services supporting maximum wellness, wherever they reside.
  • OneTable Atlanta – Atlanta Fellow
    Atlanta-based OneTable Field Fellow will empower underserved populations in building their own Jewish community, focusing on engaging Jewishly underserved demographic areas and niche populations (e.g., Jews of Color, LGBTQ, etc.).
  • Congregation Bet Haverim – Community Rabbi
    Moving beyond the concept of membership as the sole “access card” to communal engagement and rabbinic support, the community rabbi will provide life cycle and other rabbinic services to the larger community.
  • Moishe House
    Expanding the scope of Moishe House’s successful programs by supporting the addition of a 4th house in a brand new part of Atlanta, with the primary intent to serve underserved adults in Great Atlanta.
  • Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta – JCC on Wheels
    Weekly JCC programming brought to various geographic areas throughout Metro Atlanta with a JCC RV. Recreational, social, and cultural programming “delivered to you” and not constrained by bricks and mortar of existing Jewish spaces.
  • Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, Jewish Education Director’s Council & Atlanta Rabbinical Association – Reimagining Jewish Education
    This initiative leverages teachers as catalysts for change and empowers them to use innovative methods and create user-centric educational opportunities with support from nationally acclaimed educational institutions.
  • Tradition Kitchen
    An entrepreneurial venture, making kitchens into Jewish spaces around Atlanta through Jewish cooking classes in community members’ homes, taught by locals ranging from bubbes to famous chefs.
  • The Blue Dove Foundation – Mental Health Responder Toolkit
    Comprehensive project addressing mental health and substance abuse issues through a toolkit and training sessions for organizational leaders and Jewish camps to serve as “mental health first responders.”
  • Repair the World – Solidarity Through Service
    Seeking to address the fractured political climate and high income disparity in Atlanta, this initiative seeks to build consistent and meaningful volunteer and service experiences. Repair will offer community trainings and a robust workshop series for Jewish community partners who serve a broad array of populations, reaching out beyond Repair’s core work serving Millennials.
jewishatl
In Atlanta Jewish Community, Caring, Federation Innovation, Gather Grants, Innovation, People in Need, Philanthropy, Young Leadership Division

MLK Shabbat Suppers Celebrate Diversity & Dialogue

For Jews and their loved ones, Shabbat dinner is far more than a meal. It’s a weekly platform for holiness, hospitality, peace, and plenty of conversation. With that in mind, Federation awarded a Bloom Innovation seed grant to several organizations who collaborated on ways to use MLK weekend as a moment to turn Shabbat dinners into opportunities for dialogue and understanding.

On the Friday preceding Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 144 individuals across Atlanta showed up for an “MLK Shabbat Supper,” a guided dinner and discussion to honor Dr. King made possible by the collaborative efforts of Repair the World Atlanta, OneTable, the American Jewish Committee, Hands On Atlanta, and Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. There were ten simultaneous MLK Shabbat Suppers throughout the city, in neighborhoods ranging from Sandy Springs to the Westside. The religiously, racially, and gender-diverse group of hosts came from among the lay leadership of Jewish community partners including the above organizations, as well as Jewish Family and Career Services, Moishe House, and The Schusterman Family Foundation.

Participants at the dinners enjoyed a meal while diving into a discussion guide filled with thought-provoking quotes and questions from a Jewish perspective about civil rights, racial justice, and other issues of importance to Atlanta. Feel free to download the guide.

As OneTable Atlanta Hub Manager – Shira Hahn- put it, “By joining together at the table, we work towards creating new traditions that foster authentic and thoughtful engagement across difference to recognize our past and ideate a better future. Moving forward we will continue to build solidarity and greater understanding within the Jewish community and with all Atlantans.”

For those interested in further opportunities for service and dialogue, join Repair the World and partners for an anti-human trafficking event on January 27 and cooking for the Nicholas House family shelter on February 22; details and registration here.

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