Chanukah CAFE - Community & Family Education
Our new activity was a Chanukah CAFE, based on the T''u b'Shvat CAFE run by St Albans Masorti Synagogue. It was designed for all ages, focusing on different aspects of the festival, and was organized by volunteers from the organization.
We celebrated the event at a sports club on 13 December 2009. A range of activities were on offer, some for all ages together, some for specific age groups.
The first step was to find the volunteers to run the activities. We published information about the project in our newsletter around two months before the event, asking for volunteers, using the guidelines from the SAMS presentation. Afterwards we called and invited interested people to the meetings for each committee. We tried to find a specific role for each volunteer, according with each person's interests and skills, a strategy we learned at the London Conference.
After the event we had evaluation meetings with the volunteers. Photos and an article about the event were published in our newsletter. All the printed material was prepared at Vistaprint, a best practice suggestion taken from the Netherlands Masorti organization, which provided a cheap and easy way to create a more professional image and good marketing. We always included the Grundtvig logo on all printed materials.
Some of the activities during the CAFE were:
- Learning about the history of the festival
- Optional workshops:
- Cooking class (Chanukah cookies)
- Plastic arts & crafts (making your own chanukiah)
- Shira (learning Chanukah songs)
- Sports games for families
- Rikudei Am workshop
- Singing together (shira be tzibur)
- Learning how to light the chanukiah
