The Harold Grinspoon Foundation is excited to announce two new PJ Library Alliance Spark Engagement Grants to expand and deepen engagement opportunities for families raising Jewish children across North America. These grants support new initiatives to meaningfully engage families raising young Jewish children who are not regularly participating in Jewish or PJ Library programming. These grants are helping PJ library grow and diversify its work by piloting models that can be adapted across the PJ Library network, which currently includes more than 200 partners.
Spark Engagement Grants are part of a five-year strategy to extend Jewish engagement in North America through the support of the PJ Library Alliance. Our partners in the Alliance are the The Azrieli Foundation; Carl and Joann Bianco; the William Davidson Foundation; the Jim Joseph Foundation; the William and Audrey Farber Philanthropic Fund; Diane and Guilford Glazer/the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles; The Marcus Foundation, Inc.; the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation; the Susser Family Trust; Walter, Arnee, Sarah & Aaron Winshall; and two anonymous partners.
These selected initiatives will receive training and support from PJ Library and our network of current partners to develop and implement best practices in creating welcoming, low barrier, meaningful programs for young families. We look forward to working with these partners and seeing all of their exciting initiatives come to life.
Keshet
Boston, MA Keshet LGBTQ Families
Keshet will hire a program coordinator to bring together LGBTQ families with young children for monthly neighborhood-based programs in two Boston-area neighborhoods. Keshet will also organize three community-wide holiday events. Keshet will work closely with PJ Library’s implementing partner, the JCC of Greater Boston, to create high quality, low-barrier programming for families with young children. Keshet is a national organization working for full LGBTQ equality and inclusion in Jewish life. Keshet's work is guided by a vision of a world where all Jewish organizations and communities are strengthened by LGBTQ-inclusive policy, programming, culture and leadership, and where Jews of all sexual orientations and gender identities can live fully integrated Jewish lives.
Repair the World
Pittsburgh, PA Family Service Learning
Repair the World Pittsburgh will expand their social justice activism work to include families with young children, engaging parents and their young children in hands-on volunteering projects that benefit at-risk neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Repair the World will work closely with the PJ LIbrary implementing partner, the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, to develop age-appropriate monthly programs that cultivate empathy and caring and embody the Jewish value of caring for others.
Through the imperative of tikkun olam, Repair the World Pittsburgh currently offers Jewish millennials many opportunities to fulfill their social justice passion through meaningful service that is richly connected to Jewish values. Repair the World has discovered that volunteer work in a Jewish context enhances participants’ sense of Jewish identity and heritage. Repair the World imagines a world in which service is a key component of Jewish life.
July 27, 2017