Below are some of the past grant recipients from the California Ride.
Milken Community High School
The MCHS Urban Farm Co-op, initiated with help from a Hazon grant two years ago, is a sustainable gardening and food justice initiative at Milken Community High School in Los Angeles. The current garden consists of four above ground pallets that have been built, planted, and maintained by the school’s student-led environmental club. The entirety of the harvest is donated to local food banks, in coherence with the Jewish values of tzedakah and pe’ah. In the coming months, the Co-op will be partnering with a local farm in creating a CSA program that will make organic produce available for weekly pick-up on campus, and next year an elective entitled “Food & Justice For All” will further the discussion of hunger, nutrition, and sustainability. With the support of Hazon, the Co-op plans to expand its garden to a minimum of thirty-six pallets across campus, continuing to connect students to their food sources, to the earth, and to their own potential.
Congregation Beth Sholom
Z’raim Garden Project
Congregation Beth Sholom seeks to enhance and build upon its existing garden and landscape for our preschool and Hebrew school students, parents, and congregants. Further developing our small outdoor garden will build community around the shared experience of nurturing life and growing the food that is central to so many of the Jewish traditions we celebrate. The garden will include both edible and non-edible plants and fruit trees, providing opportunities for children and adults to grow food primarily for use at the synagogue and for teachers to develop a curriculum that emphasizes Jewish traditions of stewardship in an urban agricultural context.
Jewish LearningWorks
The Nosh Niche is a Jewish cooking project embedded within Jewish LearningWorks’ Shalom Discovery family engagement initiative. Shalom Discovery is created in partnership with Kol Shofar, Rodef Sholom, and the Osher Marin JCC. Goals are to help children identify their life story as part of the larger story of the Jewish people, and to empower parents to play the role of educators in their children’s Jewish experience. Curriculum is designed with an eye toward DIY Jewish learning.
The Nosh Niche brings to life issues of food justice and farm-to-table Jewish values through lesson plans that fit into Shalom Discovery’s curricular units. Nosh Niche deliverables include cooking lessons, discussion guides, and take-home recipes, along with a cooking feature on our website. Original recipes are tied to Jewish teachings, traditions, and values, and discussion points incorporate themes of family and home.
Peninsula Temple Beth El Green Team
Holistic cooking classes through the ages and stages of life. Some possible topics to present are:
- Seniors and singles: Making simple one-person meals, issues around freezing and reheating food and reducing wasted food.
- Parents with infant/toddlers: Cooking healthy meals with busy work schedules and small children
- Growing families: Dinner and snacks for young children
- Empty nesters: Downsizing meals when your household has gone from four or more back to two people
- Teens: Making healthy food choices as they become independent beings
- People in recovery: Cooking choices to support people having a medical need, aging parents or recovering from an injury.
The classes will focus on various temple groups that will impact our youngest members through our seniors. The emphasis will be to introduce to the audiences the importance of choosing healthy, sustainable ingredients, eating in the season, the nutrients in food and our food supply chain.
Kehillah Jewish High School
Kehillah seeks to revamp, expand, and improve its small school garden, which was funded and built by a student-led initiative last year. This garden has already begun contributing produce to Kehillah’s meals program, which feeds about 100 people per day with delicious vegetarian food. By growing the garden’s size, as well as its uses on campus, Kehillah can cut down on its food miles, improving overall campus sustainability while also serving as a valuable learning tool. Three particular enhancements would be pursued: construction and operation of a worm bin; construction of 3-4 new garden beds and remodeling of 2 old beds; and better integration of the garden into class curricula and student life. A grant from Hazon would not only make these projects possible financially, but it would also jumpstart student and parent interest in the garden program overall.
Temple Emanu-El Preschool
Being in San Francisco, with limited outdoors space, we have been grappling with how to include natural sciences with a focus on ecology to our children and families. This year we have been successful with outdoor education programs such as walking trips through the nearby Presidio and Family Education in Golden Gate Park with a naturalist.Through this project, we hope to bring tanks with natural habitats for animals as well as grow lights and indoor gardening to all of our classrooms. The aim is to educate teachers and families about importance of caring for living things, growing healthy food and exposing the children to concepts of sustainability as they grow up.
