Welcome everyone to Moishe House Orange County’s first house blog! This month we are blogging about being a team.
Team dynamics is a great topic that we are excited to share our insight and experiences about, from our first month as the Moishe House Orange County Team. It is amazing to look back on our first month and see how much we have already learned and grown from the programs we planned and implemented, all the while living together! It has been a wonderful learning experience for all of us and we cannot wait to continue growing and learning throughout this fun, unique, innovative journey and learning opportunity we have been provided by the Moishe House organization.
Responsibilities are divided amongst the three of us. We are all still discovering which roles we want to have in the House. Although we have only been together as a House for a month, we are learning, growing, and finding our roles, responsibilities, and voices quickly and effectively as a team. Rae is responsible for Facebook planning and advertising, and public relations (newsletters and more). Rae’s expertise in public relations has already publicized Moishe House Orange County throughout the Jewish community in Orange County and beyond! Adam is in charge of putting our programs on the public calendar and updating our database of all who have participated in Moishe House Orange County experiences and programs. Our database system is essential, so that we can track things such as how many new participants there are and how many participants are returning to our programs. Justin has taken on the role of updating the Mintranet by adding pictures, descriptions, and participant numbers for each program. Dividing roles and responsibilities has been a learning experience and something we are all still learning about.
The three of us are all been responsible for planning and owning our own unique Moishe House Orange County programs, while also supporting one another’s programs and working together on the larger programs. The three of us have different personalities, which allows each one of us to add our own spices, flavors, and interests to the House. This will be quite healthy and beneficial for Moishe House Orange County and our target population, as our different personalities and “spices” have already and will continue to lead to diverse, interesting, and empowering programs each month that will engage a broad spectrum of the target population and create a vibrant community. Some of our various upcoming programs include wine tasting, book club, lively Torah learning and discussion, outdoor activities, spiritual yoga, and a social action project. The three of us all have prior experience in planning programs for different Jewish communities, and thus building vibrant Jewish communities. Our programming experience has worked to our advantage in this first month and will beyond with Moishe House in being able to plan and run diverse, engaging, and empowering programming for the 20-something Orange County Jewish community.
The first month of Moishe House Orange County served as a platform for the community to learn about Moishe House and its residents. A number of community members have already bought into the “Moishe House” idea, so we are already receiving a lot of input and ideas from our growing community members about what type of programs they would like to see and even own. For example, a community member musician, Jacob Martin, wants to play an acoustic show at our House that he thinks will get the community excited about, so he is now playing a huge show at our House in August! Other community members are excited also about leading future programs such as challah baking, yoga, kosher cooking lessons, and jam sessions. We are excited that there are already a number of community members who are interested in Moishe House and want to take an active role in shaping and growing the organization in Orange County into the type of community they want to build and be a part of.
Our Moishe House team has weekly meetings to discuss upcoming programs and reflect on past programs and how we can use these previous programs to improve and strengthen future Moishe House Orange County programs and opportunities. One interesting concept that was brought up in our first conference call as a House is that we are constantly working as a team to plan Moishe House programs, but not spending enough time just enjoying being each other’s roommates yet. We have not found the balance between communal living/programming and just being friends and roommates, yet. One of our near future goals: to find the balance between Moishe House, and just being friends and roommates. This next month, we are looking forward to simply learning about each other more and growing as friends, while at the same time continuing to plan and implement innovative, exciting, engaging, and empowering programs for the Orange County 20-something Jewish population.
Speaking of goals, another thing we discovered on our first conference call is that we have been so caught up in the logistics of programming we have not yet set short- term nor long- term goals for the House and for ourselves. Some goals we would like to consider and set for the future include: how to create and incorporate meaningful experiences in our programs; how we want to grow as leaders and humans; where we would like to take our community to; the number of participants (new and returning) we strive for in our programs and retention rates.
Being a part of Moishe House Orange County, and the larger Moishe House organization has been an interesting, exciting, fun, empowering, learning experience after only a month! It is an empowering feeling, to be able to build a community the way that we envision and desire. We cannot express how excited we are to continue growing as individuals, community members, and leaders through Moishe House. This upcoming month is going to be great, and we can tell you there are tons of great programs coming to Orange County as we continue to grow as a team and build a vibrant community of 20-something Jews in Orange County.
L’shalom,
Moishe House Orange County Team!
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