Feed the Hungry through Heifer International

It All Starts With A Heifer

Phoebe Stern, Andrew Kiepek, and Ryan Krichbaum

Imagine a gift that not only feeds the hungry, but also empowers families to turn hunger and poverty into hope and prosperity. Welcome to Heifer International.

Rooted in the “teach a man to fish” philosophy, Heifer International not only provides families and villages with cows, chickens, and other food-providing animals, they also link communities and educate the members so they are able to generate both food and a reliable income through agricultural products such as milk, eggs and honey. This well respected not-for-profit charity feeds, educates and empowers.

This year, our 7th Grade “It All Starts With A Heifer” team is helping. A heifer is a life changing gift, so that’s our goal. We are asking that you contribute as we work to collect $500.00 and make that gift come true! Please look for our It All Starts With A Heifer bake sales at Micah in the coming months. Our collection box will also be conveniently on display – every donation helps us get closer to our goal!

We hope you will not only check in with our team at Micah, but also visit the Heifer International website which we promise will inspire you! www.heifer.org. Thank you for your support! 

August Drives - Soles4Souls and School Supplies!

Through the month of August, we are dedicating one of our collection bins to your shoes! We're donating all collected shoes to local non-profit, Soles4Souls. If you have shoes that don't fit, or shoes you just plain don't wear anymore, we want them. 

Believe it or not, the shoes you don't need could be another person's FIRST PAIR!! In fact, YOUR donated pair might be the pair needed for someone to be allowed to attend school. OR the pair you donate might help to fund a micro-enterprise that brings jobs to a community that otherwise has no way to earn a living. So here's your chance to put your shoes back to work... Just drop them in the bin and we'll do the rest.  

In our other bin....  
We are collecting school supplies for local kids in need. Everyone of us remembers, or is currently reviewing, the long list of school supplies that are demanded for the first day of school. We buy it all. But it's costly.... What would you do if you couldn't afford it? Instead of watching kids go without, we're helping out the best way we can!

Here's a list of items needed:

Pocket folders, 3-ring binders, dividers 

Backpacks, lunch boxes 

Colored pencils/pens, markers, crayons 

Glue sticks

Paper: notebook, graph, construction

Hand sanitizer, tissue 

Highlighters 

Scissors (blunt tips) 

Organizers/planners

Pens/pencils, erasers 

USB flash drives

Calculators

Notebooks 

Micah's B'nai Mitzvah Kids Featured in The Tablet

Sometimes we can get so distracted by the busy nature of our own lives that we miss all the myriad of ways that our wonderful congregation is reaching out to and affecting the larger community and world. Our Micah professional leadership is often just as busy around Nashville as they are at Micah, participating in boards, sitting on panels, and delivering lectures. But Micah's outreach into the community doesn't stop there. Even our religious school teachers and students are having an incredible effect on the larger community.  Check it out!

  

 

From Tablet Magazine - Written by Marjorie Ingall 

     "...At Congregation Micah in Nashville, Tenn., teacher Rachel Tawil Kenyon ensures that there's Jewish perspective and pedagogical value to mitzvah projects. She told me, "Stuff is more tangible to kids than money. We just did a collection for Children's Family Services and the YES program that ended up with maybe $1,000 in school supplies, but that doesn't mean much to kids. What matters to them is seeing the pencils, and carrying the backpacks out to my car. They can wrap their brains around that much more easily than [the abstract notion] of a dollar."

     Last year, Kenyon's seventh-graders did a project to help a local shelter for battered women. "We started with an education component, talking about domestic violence," Kenyon said. "What you learn about relationships as a teenager affects your relationships later. We've had a representative from a shelter and a former resident come speak. The kids learn about what you might need if you flee your house with nothing but a backpack. Even upper-income women may not have access to money. So, we make care baskets-personal hygiene stuff. The girls get really into getting hair products. Kids will say, 'iPhones!' and then we say, 'OK, if we can't give them iPhones, what can we do?' We get them calling cards. And we keep impressing on the kids that our projects are not about going home and asking your parents for money, though they may choose to give some of their bar or bat mitzvah money."

     Kenyon has her students do independent research and interviews, then do a Shabbat presentation to the group about their cause. "Suddenly they feel personally connected," she said. "I grew up in a theater family, and I know that for adults who don't go to the theater as a child, it's like pulling teeth to get them to go as adults. But if you start as a kid, you grow up to be a theatergoer. Doing something well now makes it become second nature."...."

Click here to read the full story.

Room In the Inn begins November 11

Under the leadership of Cindy Landsman, Andy Saul, and Bob Smith, Congregation Micah will once again participate this year in the Room In The Inn program.

We will be hosting five nights this year:

November 11, 2012

December 9, 2012

January 13, 2013

February 10, 2013

March 10, 2013

We'll be hosting 14 guests on each evening and are again in need of donations of casual, cold weather clothing: coats, hats, gloves, scarves, warm socks, boots, heavy shoes, etc. We are also in need of toiletries and any DVD's that are gathering dust in your bookcases. Please bring all donations to the Micah office.

All members of Congregation Micah are more than welcome to join the festivities! If you want more information, feel free to call or email the Micah office at office@congregationmicah.org.

Room In The Inn, in partnership with more than 160 local congregations, provided shelter for 1,286 individuals from November 2009 to March 2010. For more information about the Room In The Inn organization, visit www.RoomInTheInn.org.