Terminology

I was privy, at the AVODAH annual staff retreat, to an interesting discussion on terminology, which taps into questions about AVODAH's purpose.

We talked about three terms often used to describe what AVODAH do:

1. Social justice

2. Service

3. Social change

We didn't come to any decisive conclusions but it was suggested that:

• 'Social justice' refers to attempts to address oppression
• 'Service' might not be the same as 'services,' which generally refer to direct and specific attempts to alleviate the symptoms of oppression and/or poverty
• 'Social change' could of course be positive or negative. We generally use it to refer to positive attempts to address the root causes of poverty and/or oppression

'Tikkun Olam' is a term I didn't hear used to describe what AVODAH does. Sarra Alpert suggested this is possibly because it has lost meaning through over-use in the Jewish community. I would also imagine it is a less useful (overly exclusive) term for a programme dealing with non-Jewish partner organisations in addition to Jewish communities.

It is worth thinking about what kind of terminology a UK version of AVODAH would use. 'Social action' is commonly used and reasonably well-understood in this country, 'service' probably less so.

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.

First meetings, issues and questions

I arrived at the AVODAH New York offices yesterday and went straight into meetings with various staff members, continuing today when I also had the chance to sit in on a meeting at the staff retreat and a Corps Members meeting in the evening.

So far I have met with Sarra Alpert (New York City Program Director), Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay (National Education Director), Mollie Spevack (Recruitment Coordinator) and Marilyn Sneiderman (Executive Director). Having also participated in a staff exercise, brainstorming ways that AVODAH can grow and increase its impact, I have heard a huge amount of information and realise just how many different factors there are to play with when considering any sort of UK programme model.

It seems the easiest way for me to order the issues and questions that have come up is to record them under broad headings. Starting with...

Staff and organisational structure

• According to our original proposal to the JHub "initial staff will be a professional project manager and a project director-advisor" with the project manager "doubling up as house contact & coordinator until AVODAH UK has the capacity to recruit a dedicated member of staff for this purpose." AVODAH in the US has seven staff members in its National Office alone, with a further twelve staff members on regional or affiliated assignments. One staff member told me they are both over-staffed and under-staffed i.e. there's a high level of separation of roles but they find they are stretched to do all the work.
• The question is really what staff and structure will AVODAH UK need? For example, will we need someone to work exclusively on participant recruitment and communications? Will we need someone to devote their time to the education component of the programme?
• Our funding will be limited (certainly less than the AVODAH budget) and our scale smaller (given the relative size of the UK Jewish community), so really the question is - what staff are absolutely necessary?
• There may well be ways to consolidate and save costs. For example, no doubt if we were to set up our new programme to replicate the way the current AVODAH houses are run we would need a separate programme director (including the role of house manager) in addition to the overall director of the AVODAH UK. However, one issue that came up is that of participant autonomy. Perhaps if the house was more self-governing it would need less management from AVODAH UK staff.
• Another way to save costs might be to partner more officially with AVODAH in the US, pooling resources and even sharing some program(me) staff. This raises the bigger issue of the relationship between AVODAH UK (or whatever it is called) and AVODAH. Whether we will in some way affiliate or exist as an independent international partner organisation is an area I will no doubt return to at a later point.

The house

• Jewish communal living, together in a house, is at the heart of AVODAH and also our plans for the UK project. AVODAH is almost alone in offering a program which combines working for social justice with the opportunity to live in Jewish community.
• We might, however, choose to organise the house and communal living aspect along different lines to our US cousins. For example, there are currently 18 Corps Members (i.e participants) in one house in Brooklyn, with most sharing a room with at least one other person. If we ran for similar numbers, would we be able to find a house so big? Can we offer a room per person or would that be too expensive? Other cities have split the group between two houses. Would this be a viable option for us or might it be too expensive or divisive in the group? I do expect we'll have fewer participants in our first cohort, so some of these questions may be somewhat moot.
• One very real issue is how we pay for the property. AVODAH in the US makes an agreement with a landlord. They don't own a property but they act as the tenants' agent, fully disclosing the nature of the program and sometimes acting as intermediary between the Corps Members and the landlord. They also furnish the house. If a donor such as the Pears Foundation could allow the use of one of their properties, the UK version of AVODAH could save a huge amount of programme costs, which could have a knock-on positive effect on making the participants affordable to the placement organisations and the programme affordable to the participants.

Communal living

• A number of decisions will need to be made regarding the nature of the communal living experience, including the boundaries and parameters set by AVODAH UK.
• Will the house be kosher? Vegetarian? Do we leave this up to the participants? AVODAH in the US kasher each house's kitchen at the start of the year, require that it is vegetarian for the orientation week, and then allow the Corps Members to determine their house's own level of kashrut, so long as it is as kosher as the most observant Corps Member. This I imagine works as the focus of the program is on the social justice work and then communal living for the Corps Members - not, as with Moishe House, on laying on events for other members of the Jewish community.
• AVODAH Corps Members are required to have two Shabbats per month i.e. at least two meals or events, over two separate Shabbats, at which all members should be present. Sometimes they choose to invite friends or program alumni, sometimes it's just them. I see the value in the requirement, as it helps to build and encourages the Jewish communal aspect of the program, especially as the group usually contains a variety of Jewish backgrounds and levels of knowledge and engagement. One general question for us is: what requirements would we need to make to our participants to create the kind of programme (Jewish communal, educational, justice-oriented) that we want?
• Related to this (or put another way): how much autonomy would we give the participants? One of the strengths and successes of say Moishe House is the degree of independence and autonomy enjoyed by the residents - giving residents the freedom to choose how they create their own communities has paid massive dividends. But AVODAH is a program in ways Moishe House isn't. The participants will likely be younger and the challenges of communal living while tackling poverty and oppression more intense.
• How would we ensure the right kind of blend among the group? Age, religious observance and gender are all factors here. AVODAH currently stipulate that applicants should be 21-26 years old. This is primarily to make living together a more fruitful, dare I say viable, experience.
• Meanwhile, there have been quite few orthodox applicants for the program. This may be to do with cultural expectations and priorities in various orthodox communities, but it's probably also due to mixed gender living arrangements and not knowing if the community will be 'halachic observance-friendly'. In the UK, where divisions between orthodoxy and non-orthodoxy are even more pronounced, how would we cultivate full cross-communal representation? One AVODAH staff member encouraged me to investigate getting the Office of the Chief Rabbi on board in some way - I explained the political difficulties this would involve but issues of affiliation and endorsement (including 'soft' endorsement) are very worth considering.
• There are generally more women than men on AVODAH. This is quite common in Jewish non-profit and social justice programmes. These are all issues for recruitment.
• Just to note, if we had the house in say Hackney, I anticipated one of its benefits would be reviving a sense of (pluralistic, forward-looking) Jewish community in the area. It was for this reason that I suggested in the proposal that participants could put on events once in a while (like a very part-time Moishe House). We will have to see if this is too far outside the programme's core remit: namely Jewish communal living and social justice work.

Feasibility study and blog

From September to December 2010 my task is to research and write a feasibility study for the Pears Foundation, exploring the possibility of setting up a new Jewish communal living and social action project in London, based largely on AVODAH Jewish Service Corps, which has been running in the United States since 1998.

I will be using this blog to record my progress and capture thoughts and issues as they come up. I don't expect anyone else to read this, except maybe Steve Miller, my mentor on the project, but do hope it will be a useful resource towards writing the feasibility study, more ordered and thought through than a set of personal notes or even a journal, but less structured and formal than the final paper itself. I intend to update the blog each time I discover something new, have an important or interesting meeting around the project, or need to think my way round a problem or set of issues.

I anticipate the feasibility study will cover three main areas: mapping existing projects and organisations similar or related to the one I and my colleague Andrew Munk are proposing to establish, describing what else is out there in the Jewish and non-Jewish world, both in the UK and abroad; scoping the potential for our new organisation, identifying the main issues, financial, operational or otherwise; and setting out a blueprint for action, making specific proposals and recommendations to the Pears Foundation and JHub, who are sponsoring this study.