Johannesburg Moishe Blog

Hello All

It has been a really good month for Moishe House JHB. It did start off a bit late but we produced the magic after about 10 days in.

We began a brilliant initiative this month; teaming up with Equal Education (a Non-Profit Organization) in collecting names for a petition they are doing. They are going to take the names to the South African Government and put pressure on them to increase the number of libraries in the country. We felt that we were not doing enough Tikkun Olam programmes or events and decided to go out there and find a cause or organization that we liked and join them in a project of theirs. Daniel Linde was very instrumental in doing this. It is a 'strength' of his as he has created many contacts within in the NGO world in South Africa. Unfortunately the events didn't attract as many people as we hoped but that is fine. We have realized that joining up with other organizations is a brilliant technique in fulfilling our Tikkun Olam goals and we will be doing more events like this.

Every month we try to have two house meetings; one of which will become the house supper for the month. We try do one near the begining of the month, in the first week, and then another one on about the 20th. This enables us to plan ahead and set goals for the month and to also check on our progress during the month. At these meeting we discuss eachother's involvement and work and also divide up things for the next little bit.

Daniel Barnett, being the most organized one, will monitor receipts and ensure that everything is in order. And then between Daniel Linde and myself we ensure the calender, the events and the photos are up and in order. This is probably the only time that issues or tensions arises as sometimes things are not done as timeously as we hope and we do argue about responsibilities. But within a few minutes thigns are back on track and we just recreate the responsibilities if neccessary.

Otherwise August was a really great month. We had lots of events with lots of people. It was also a very diverse month in terms of the kinds of events we ran. But we have set a benchmark now and things will only carrying on like this.