Placements

One of the main areas we'll need to explore is placements i.e. the social justice, service and anti-poverty NGOs in which the participants would work for the duration of the programme. Any new AVODAH-like project would have to make the contacts in these potential placement organisations and convince a sufficient number that an AVODAH UK participant would bring valuable acquisition. How are those contacts made and partnerships made? What skills would they require from their AVODAH UK participants? How much would they be willing to pay for a Corps Member?

I plan to meet potential placements over the course of the feasibility study, but AVODAH in the US provides a number of pointers and issues for consideration:

• AVODAH placement types are currently a mix between 'service' (i.e. direct, face to face work with clients in need) and 'community organizing' (i.e. helping people advocate for themselves e.g. bringing tenants together). How specific would we want our organisation's focus to be? Is it 'anti-poverty' or 'anti-oppression' in general? And what is the culture of service and community organising in this country? Where do developments such as London Citizens fit in?

• AVODAH currently require that a Corps Member's work is at least 50% working with clients, as opposed to administrative work.

• Andrew and I have wondered how we might manage to create sufficient placement demand for an AVODAH UK Corps Member if participants lack specialist skills to bring to the organisation. But AVODAH USA have few problems placing Corps Members in positions that require quick training and no specific experience or qualifications. Corps Members often create their own projects and tend to work in 'intake' and 'screening' roles e.g. paralegals or receiving first contact from clients. Sometimes language skills or teaching ability are useful, but schools in particular tend to expect people with less experience.

• All of AVODAH's placements are listed here. Examples include housing action centers and homebuilders, school children's student empowerment organizations, mediation centers, specialized health services, homeless counseling services and program assistants in domestic violence sanctuaries. While these are useful examples of the type of work carried out by Corps Members, the exact nature of the organisations a UK programme would work with will depend on local or city-wide needs, demand and the NGO culture.

• In the USA, placements apply (by form) for an AVODAH Corps Member and demand generally outstrips supply. Most of the placement organizations working with the NYC program have partnered with AVODAH for at least 10 years. AVODAH Corps Members have a good reputation that comes with the program, and - while AVODAH certainly doesn't want to put not-for-profit workers out of a job, placements know they can get a good worker for relatively little money.

• A new AVODAH organisation in the UK will have to build up relationships with placements from scratch. A good place to start will be to follow up personal contacts in potentially suitable NGOs. It will also be worth approaching organisations who already use interns and participants from programmes such as City Year, as they will likely know how to make best use of Corps Members - in America AVODAH Corps Members often work alongside participants from programs such as Americorps. We would have to put to NGOs the question: if we could provide you with a capable but non-specialised person at such and such price, would that work for you?

• AVODAH have consciously chosen to work with a wide variety of organizations in a wide variety of fields. The program addresses a range of issues and, with monthly site visits to each other's workplaces, offers Corps Members a chance to learn about a number of different approaches to and methods in social justice work and service.

• This raises the issue of breadth versus depth. An option that AVODAH in the USA has chosen not to pursue so far is to focus and entire Corps' placements around one issue or in one deprived geographical area, which could enable the group to make a more tangible impact. The project proposal that Andrew and I submitted to the JHub suggested we would base the participants' work in and around one London borough, in which the house would be based too. Additional advantages could include higher visibility and positive community relations within the area, increased cooperation between participants/placements and the possibility of an AVODAH multi-agency approach, lower transport costs and greater programme manageability. It might also help participants enhance the sense of Jewish community in their area. The BINA BaShchuna programme which runs in South Tel Aviv provides a very useful model for locally focused communal living, Jewish learning and social action.

• If we do recommend a local focus, to what extent should we institute official programme elements ensuring participant interaction with their neighbourhood organisations and communities, outside of work placements? In AVODAH's smaller city programs, such as Washington DC and New Orleans, this kind of interaction has sometimes developed organically, by itself.

• As much as possible, the relationship between placements and their AVODAH Corps Members is unmediated and treated as a normal job. While the placement match-up process results in AVODAH's specialized 'three-way contract' - an agreement between AVODAH, the Corps Member and the placement - AVODAH will only step into a work situation if a situation has deteriorated seriously or irretrievably i.e. if that contract has been breached in some way. I imagine this increases the sense of professionalism for the placement and the Corps Member, prevents messy over-complication, and maximises participant learning on the job.

• Any concerns about attracting a sufficient number of placements notwithstanding, we will have to consider our criteria for choosing organisations to partner with. AVODAH USA prefer NGOs with a strong concept of long-term change (often with a legislation team) rather than simply alleviating symptoms of poverty, who can clearly make good use of a Corps Member, and who are small enough to feel personal and include the participant in a sense of camaraderie.