Step Up supported housing and BOSS
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS)
Working with BOSS. We have welcomed residents of the Step Up transitional housing on University Avenue. We raised funds, bought items, wrote notes and packed and delivered welcome baskets for the new residents. We are currently in conversation with BOSS about on-site classes residents might be interested in and which we could provide. This may also extend to the Berkeley Women’s [and children’s] shelter. When we know what they want, we would work on recruiting CNS members as presenters. Berkeley Shelter has yard work days onsite about quarterly, and this may be another way to involve members and youth if it is not on Shabbat.
McGee Avenue Baptist Church and Center for Food Faith and Justice
We help with weekly sorting of food donations for its community hot lunch program, to both support serving the hungry in our community and to build an ongoing relationship with the church community. This congregation is closely involved with a sister organization, Center for Food Faith and Justice, which leverages their two nearby plots of land to provide fresh produce for the Food Program, engage at-risk youth, provide training for homeless and formerly incarcerated people to enter the work force, and do urban farming and healthy eating education in their community.
We raise funds by highlighting Jewish values and community needs through writing newsletter articles and doing drashot about the organizations and what we can do
Exs. sukkot and housing, Purim matanot li’evyomin [gifts to the poor].
Berkeley Public School Fund
Our members volunteer at monthly food pantries at BUSD schools run by BPSF and Berkeley Food Network. CNS members are able to donate to the BPSF through CNS’ holiday food campaigns as listed in Netivot News for the last few years.
We’re Cooking Soup!
The CNS Community Action Working Group has a new volunteer opportunity to support food security in our community. Consider The Homeless! provides a hot meal to unhoused folks (along with donated bread and survival supplies) twice a week, year-round. Volunteers prepare a large batch of hearty soup, and others then drive it around town, serving it to folks wherever they are. CNS and CAWG member Ruth Konoff is organizing a group of volunteers to prepare a BIG batch of soup in the CNS kitchen on Sunday, June 28. If you would like to help – even for an hour or so – please sign up HERE (or contact Ruth at rkonoff@gmail.com). We hope to continue this activity monthly (or more if there are enough volunteers.
Supporting Food-Insecure Immigrants
A new project is underway supporting food-insecure immigrant households. Some immigrant families become food-insecure because a loved one has been apprehended by ICE and suddenly the family has lost crucial income. Other recipients are remaining underground, afraid to even go to the supermarket lest they not return (leaving their kids functionally abandoned). A group of Netivotniks has made the weekly commitment to shop for and deliver groceries to two families (we can expand this when capacity allows). Some volunteers shop and others deliver the parcels. Want to support this impactful work? Reach out to learn more. Please consider a donation to support the purchase of food for our immigrant neighbors.
Donations should be made to the Housing and Food Security Fund (one of the donation options on the CNS website) with a note indicating ‘Immigrant Food Support.’
For more info and to volunteer: Rabbi Allan Berkowitz (allanleeb1@gmail.com)
Other Social Action activities include the following:
Interfaith Group
Tobie Lurietobie.lurie@gmail.com
Serena Heaslip serenaheaslip@yahoo.com
We plan activities with the Pacifica Institute, a Turkish Muslim group, to promote interfaith relationships and understanding. We have shared an annual Iftar for several years and an annual summer picnic. We have had discussion groups and are hoping to do more.
Annual Interfaith Blood Drive
Mary Breiner marybreiner@pacbell.net
Vicki Sommer vickisommer@gmail.com
Netivot Shalom helps meet critical medical needs by co-sponsoring this drive with five other local faith-based groups. Help organize our next blood drive or plan to join us on the day of the drive as a donor or volunteer. Learn more about this year’s drive!