Moishe House Vienna - House dynamic
How are responsibilities shared and divided.?
We set for each events of the month, who will be responsible for undertaking it; however everyone gets involve! The one responsible is generally the one delegating the tasks. Regarding Moishe house duties (blogs, receipts etc..,) Danny uploads the receipt, Michi the photos, Eytan the monthly blog and David reminds us a few day before the dead lines that we have to upload everything!
Do you involve community members in the planning and execution of events?
We do indeed involve community members both in the planning and the execution of events. We believe that this is the best to make members feel part of the community. As we mentioned in the last blog, this makes them feel like hosts rather than just guests of the Moishe Casa.
How are each resident's individual strengths used to benefit the house/community?
Eytan fishes, Michi prepares the cooking material, Danny cooks the fish and David adds the good spices!
let us elucidate:
Eytan is the one specialize in fishing some very nice people to be part of our community.
Michi is so to say the action man, he is the one that both organizes and makes sure that everything is ready for an event, and that, always with a very positive attitude which inspires many to be active also.
Danny is the one who during the event, always have an eye on everything, and make sure that the event runs smooth.
David is the one, putting the atmosphere in the Moishe house; he also motivates the community to play basket ball on sundays in order to loose the extra weight accumulated from the 3 shabbat meals!
How does your house organize and plan each month?
We have a major meeting a the beginning of the month, where we discuss both the past month and plan the next one. These meetings can take up to 2 hours, and many time involves pizza and beers.
Then we also have mini-meetings that takes place before and after each events. Prior the event to set the focus and make sure that everything is ready; after the event, to analyse what went well and not well in order to make the next one better!
Do you set monthly goals for the house?
Not only we set monthly goals but we also set yearly goals. We believe that spending time, setting the goals at the beginning is crucial for the success of Moishe house; It helps to keep focus on the vision and also motivate us to reach them.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
MH Boston: Team Empowerment!
WHAT'S IN A NAME
Moishe House Boston has a dual affiliation - we are also known as Kavod Jewish Social Justice House, which was our name before we joined forces with Moishe. Kavod means honor, and comes from a line in the Mishna: “Who receives honor/kavod? The one who treats all beings with kavod.” Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Ancestors) 4:1. At the Moishe/Kavod House, we seek to treat all with honor, recognizing the unique talents each person has to share. Through this kavod, young people are empowered to strengthen both the Jewish community and local social activism.
EMPOWERMENT
At Moishe House Boston, the key to the housemates' work is empowering others. Our housemates work as organizers and "weavers," connecting our participants (called "members") to people and projects we think they will like. Much of the actual leadership of our programming and structural work is done by members, who work together with the housemates on various programmatic and structural teams.
HOUSEMATES AS ORGANIZERS AND CONNECTORS
The job of the housemates is to coordinate the work of our members, develop their leadership, and make sure our overall work is meeting the goals we set out for ourselves. Each of the housemates is responsible for working with one or more program teams, such as Shabbat or social justice, and one or more structure teams, such as membership or communications. To coordinate and enhance our work, we hold weekly house meetings in which we do check-ins about how we are doing, set goals and check in on our work, and sometimes brainstorm about how to grow in certain areas or tackle a particular challenge.
THE BOARD
We are currently setting up a volunteer board to make sure that members are also at the center of our high level decision making. The board will be composed of the four housemates and five members who will make broader strategic decisions together and facilitate our various management teams (like membership and communications). We are holding elections in September, and are excited to see how this part of our work develops.
WHY WE LIKE OUR MODEL
We like our model because it allows us to empower young people to help create our community, which is part of the larger Moishe House mission. Our model also allows us to do a great deal more than we could on our own as housemates, since there are just so many more people helping out. Finally, we have found that when members participate in planning events and organizing our community, they are more invested in the community as a whole.
Moishe House Boston has a dual affiliation - we are also known as Kavod Jewish Social Justice House, which was our name before we joined forces with Moishe. Kavod means honor, and comes from a line in the Mishna: “Who receives honor/kavod? The one who treats all beings with kavod.” Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Ancestors) 4:1. At the Moishe/Kavod House, we seek to treat all with honor, recognizing the unique talents each person has to share. Through this kavod, young people are empowered to strengthen both the Jewish community and local social activism.
EMPOWERMENT
At Moishe House Boston, the key to the housemates' work is empowering others. Our housemates work as organizers and "weavers," connecting our participants (called "members") to people and projects we think they will like. Much of the actual leadership of our programming and structural work is done by members, who work together with the housemates on various programmatic and structural teams.
HOUSEMATES AS ORGANIZERS AND CONNECTORS
The job of the housemates is to coordinate the work of our members, develop their leadership, and make sure our overall work is meeting the goals we set out for ourselves. Each of the housemates is responsible for working with one or more program teams, such as Shabbat or social justice, and one or more structure teams, such as membership or communications. To coordinate and enhance our work, we hold weekly house meetings in which we do check-ins about how we are doing, set goals and check in on our work, and sometimes brainstorm about how to grow in certain areas or tackle a particular challenge.
THE BOARD
We are currently setting up a volunteer board to make sure that members are also at the center of our high level decision making. The board will be composed of the four housemates and five members who will make broader strategic decisions together and facilitate our various management teams (like membership and communications). We are holding elections in September, and are excited to see how this part of our work develops.
WHY WE LIKE OUR MODEL
We like our model because it allows us to empower young people to help create our community, which is part of the larger Moishe House mission. Our model also allows us to do a great deal more than we could on our own as housemates, since there are just so many more people helping out. Finally, we have found that when members participate in planning events and organizing our community, they are more invested in the community as a whole.
MHP = Team Awesome
If we could summarize our house execution of monthly programming into three areas they would be "collaboration," "coordination," and "planning ahead." Moishe House Philadelphia prides ourselves on weekly meetings and how we utilize the full extent of Google Documents in order to plan our events. Let's break down the three areas to really understand how everything gets done.
COLLABORATION: Every aspect of MHP events are decided together. We have weekly meetings every Tuesday evening wherein we discuss the ups and downs of events from the previous week, finalize plans for the next week's events, and look forward to the rest of the month and long-term events before getting into anything else we, as a group, decide we need to talk about. We send out an agenda email every week in preparation for this meeting so the agenda is known and can be added to or commented on as well. All these plans are discussed to their fullest extent and then notes of the meeting are placed in our MHP email account as a separate Google Doc. Even if someone cannot attend this meeting, they are still able to voice their opinion via email ahead of time and keep track of discussions/decisions via the notes. We keep our meetings capped at an hour long, in order to maintain a balance between Moishe House and the rest of our busy lives.
COORDINATION: It is important that we take into consideration our own schedules as well as those of the local community when planning our monthly calendar. We are well connected with the other Graduate and Professional organizations around Philadelphia so that we know their schedules and they know ours. With this knowledge, and by posting our own individual calendars on our shared Google Calendar, we are able to make sure not to conflict too much with other things going on. Sometimes it gets difficult if two of our members are gone, but usually we know about absenses far enough in advance that we are able to plan ahead of time for any issues that may come up. Sharing this information has proved crucial to our success.
PLANNING AHEAD: We are very busy people, as most MH house members probably are, so it is critical that we think about our schedules in advance and are able to take into account all of our desires/plans when finalizing the event calendar. For this reason we try to have at least a skeleton schedule of a particular month by the beginning of the previous one (i.e. we have an idea of what to do for September by August 1). Then, we discuss the events during August and finalize plans so we can post everything a couple of weeks ahead. This may not always work with our plans, but at least the attempt gives us time to contact community members who want to be involved, ensure we are preparing better-quality events with more prep time, and know who is going to be around.
That's the basic essence of what we do here at MHP. We think we have created an organized vision of how MHP works in Philadelphia and look forward to continuing this year.
COLLABORATION: Every aspect of MHP events are decided together. We have weekly meetings every Tuesday evening wherein we discuss the ups and downs of events from the previous week, finalize plans for the next week's events, and look forward to the rest of the month and long-term events before getting into anything else we, as a group, decide we need to talk about. We send out an agenda email every week in preparation for this meeting so the agenda is known and can be added to or commented on as well. All these plans are discussed to their fullest extent and then notes of the meeting are placed in our MHP email account as a separate Google Doc. Even if someone cannot attend this meeting, they are still able to voice their opinion via email ahead of time and keep track of discussions/decisions via the notes. We keep our meetings capped at an hour long, in order to maintain a balance between Moishe House and the rest of our busy lives.
COORDINATION: It is important that we take into consideration our own schedules as well as those of the local community when planning our monthly calendar. We are well connected with the other Graduate and Professional organizations around Philadelphia so that we know their schedules and they know ours. With this knowledge, and by posting our own individual calendars on our shared Google Calendar, we are able to make sure not to conflict too much with other things going on. Sometimes it gets difficult if two of our members are gone, but usually we know about absenses far enough in advance that we are able to plan ahead of time for any issues that may come up. Sharing this information has proved crucial to our success.
PLANNING AHEAD: We are very busy people, as most MH house members probably are, so it is critical that we think about our schedules in advance and are able to take into account all of our desires/plans when finalizing the event calendar. For this reason we try to have at least a skeleton schedule of a particular month by the beginning of the previous one (i.e. we have an idea of what to do for September by August 1). Then, we discuss the events during August and finalize plans so we can post everything a couple of weeks ahead. This may not always work with our plans, but at least the attempt gives us time to contact community members who want to be involved, ensure we are preparing better-quality events with more prep time, and know who is going to be around.
That's the basic essence of what we do here at MHP. We think we have created an organized vision of how MHP works in Philadelphia and look forward to continuing this year.
House Dynamics - MH Beijing
I don’t know if it works like this in the US houses, but one of our biggest challenges is long absences. Between the general appeal of travel in China and in the region, being in Beijing so far away from home also means that when we go back to the US we generally stay for a good chunk of time. So we have to know we can rely on our other housemates, that anyone can run an event.
Luckily, we have good communication. We try to sit down at the end of every month and talk about our schedules and what kinds of events we want to do. Our knew idea is to institute a monthly Shabbat dinner, 8-12 people, that will really gain notoriety in circles-in-the-know in our city. We also want one event a month to be discussion-based, with a text or video prompt. We form these goals by reviewing what events we think are most successful, and trying to both emulate and improve upon them. We also get feedback from our regulars about what kind of events they would support, and try to coordinate our events with our community’s general social calendar.
I think this communication is evidenced by how seamlessly we transitioned to having a new housemate, Tyler. Because he was already regularly pitching in and involved with planning of events, it feels like he’s been living with us since the beginning!
Luckily, we have good communication. We try to sit down at the end of every month and talk about our schedules and what kinds of events we want to do. Our knew idea is to institute a monthly Shabbat dinner, 8-12 people, that will really gain notoriety in circles-in-the-know in our city. We also want one event a month to be discussion-based, with a text or video prompt. We form these goals by reviewing what events we think are most successful, and trying to both emulate and improve upon them. We also get feedback from our regulars about what kind of events they would support, and try to coordinate our events with our community’s general social calendar.
I think this communication is evidenced by how seamlessly we transitioned to having a new housemate, Tyler. Because he was already regularly pitching in and involved with planning of events, it feels like he’s been living with us since the beginning!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
How it's Done, Moishe House Seattle-Style
Dividing up tasks to complete is not a problem at our house. We're not in high school anymore: there isn't the one slacker, and the perfectionist who takes on too much. We're all pretty supportive of each other and try to handle tasks collaboratively. So if someone is throwing a Shabbat dinner, you can bet their housemate will do the sweeping while they're in the kitchen. Or if someone throws an event at the movies, their housemate will park the car while they're buying tickets.
We try to incorporate each other's strengths. Since Nicole is an excellent camper and knows all about the perfect heat-insulating sleeping bags and hiking boots and bug sprays to bring on camping trails, we enourage her to plan our outdoor events. Since Neal is a movie buff and can remember the plots of movies hes seen ten years ago (and can analyze characters, conflicts, and come to an independent conclusion as to whether or not the director has succeeded in his artistic vision), we encourage him to plan our movie-themed events. Masha is an excellent bridge between Russia and America, and a fierce tango dancer and amazing cook, so we encourage and support her in planning Russian-themed events, dance parties, and help her in the kitchen when she's cooking something for shabbat (we also help her by eating her food). Steven is a writer and actor, so he plans the theatrical programming (like story night and campy movie night) and we help him by reading our stories and poems at his events, and attempting to remember all the lines from our favorite camp movie classics.
Sometimes we like to partner with other Jewish organizations in the area to bring fresh faces to our events. This month, we partnered with Seattle-based "JConnect" on a kayaking trip. It taught us an important lesson about communication: when kayaking, don't paddle away from your kayaking friends or you will end up lost and alone. At the next kayaking event, we will bring a bullhorn.
Every week, we like to find a time as a group to decompress and talk about how things have been going. We talk about the mundane (rent, chores) and the exciting (new members, event ideas, ways to expand programming). By checking in, we affirm each other and feel more like a team. It helps to remind us that we're so lucky to be able to live with our friends and throw events for such a diverse community. Instead of living alone or with strangers, we feel like we're part of a wider social network where the social opportunities are truly endless.
We try to incorporate each other's strengths. Since Nicole is an excellent camper and knows all about the perfect heat-insulating sleeping bags and hiking boots and bug sprays to bring on camping trails, we enourage her to plan our outdoor events. Since Neal is a movie buff and can remember the plots of movies hes seen ten years ago (and can analyze characters, conflicts, and come to an independent conclusion as to whether or not the director has succeeded in his artistic vision), we encourage him to plan our movie-themed events. Masha is an excellent bridge between Russia and America, and a fierce tango dancer and amazing cook, so we encourage and support her in planning Russian-themed events, dance parties, and help her in the kitchen when she's cooking something for shabbat (we also help her by eating her food). Steven is a writer and actor, so he plans the theatrical programming (like story night and campy movie night) and we help him by reading our stories and poems at his events, and attempting to remember all the lines from our favorite camp movie classics.
Sometimes we like to partner with other Jewish organizations in the area to bring fresh faces to our events. This month, we partnered with Seattle-based "JConnect" on a kayaking trip. It taught us an important lesson about communication: when kayaking, don't paddle away from your kayaking friends or you will end up lost and alone. At the next kayaking event, we will bring a bullhorn.
Every week, we like to find a time as a group to decompress and talk about how things have been going. We talk about the mundane (rent, chores) and the exciting (new members, event ideas, ways to expand programming). By checking in, we affirm each other and feel more like a team. It helps to remind us that we're so lucky to be able to live with our friends and throw events for such a diverse community. Instead of living alone or with strangers, we feel like we're part of a wider social network where the social opportunities are truly endless.
MHSS Teamwork!
Both the meetings and emails keep every Moishe House Silver Spring resident on the same page and working as a team. Generally our MH has house meetings every 10 days or so. However, a number of emails are sent out daily pitching ideas for new events or brainstorming how we should organize a certain event. Each house members brings a little something different to the table, whether is creative weekly listserve emails, different outreach methods, jewish programming, justice programming, a car, a camera,... you get the idea. After living with the same people for a few months, you begin to know who to go to for different questions.
At our house meetings we address two main topics: house stuff & event stuff. It's important to make sure any house frustration are discussed and resolved so we can all enjoy each others company and focus our energy on events and our community. Then we start with events, in chronological order we touch base on each event already on the big house calendar, who's the point person, what she/ he needs from the rest of the house, who can be there, logistics, and any other questions. Then we throw out new ideas for either the upcoming months or to put it in the 'bike rack' for future months. Because each house member has different interests, we do an incredible job of having a mix of events (i think a variety of events is a goal that we don't need to put much energy in). More recently, we've been involving some of our more active communty members in helping suggest and plan some events. This has been very successful.
I am going to take an upcoming event, Food Justice BBQ, as an example to describe how as a house we work as a team. Next week we are hosting this very exciting and large event. This event will focus on justice and envirnomental issues and also how they are jewish issues. MHSS was fortunate enough to get a grant for this event, which was achieve by the work brainstormed in a house meeting (We are purchasing local, organic kosher meat to bbq and local and organic produce for the vegetarians and side dishes. During the event we will have some presentations around the food, justice, envirnomental, jewish theme.) and two of the housemates writing up the grant proposal. In preparation for the event, different house members have different responsibilities. One person is working on coordinating speakers and another person is focusing on the food. Of course, I don't want to forget that two housemates had to go pick up another grill, which due to the size of the grill and size of the car turned out to be a more challenging errand than expected. The house will definately be working as a team in preparation for the event, we have lots of chopping, dicing, mixing and cleaning. All house residents are planning to help out after shabbat starts and the sunday morning before the event starts. We've also all be recruiting volunteers to help out. We're all very exciting for this event, and it wouldn't have been possible without teamwork!
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Working together in Dallas
Our house mostly emails each other to finalize plans for Moishe House. We are both so busy with different schedules, that we find this is the best way to collaborate ideas and get them posted. Whenever we have an event, we always remind everyone about all the other events coming up that month and some ideas we have for the following month. We like to get input from the community on what they would like to do because, after all, it is for them. For example, we have a different theme for Shabbat every month since everyone has different taste in food. This coming month, we are going to give everyone 2 or 3 options to vote on so they feel more involved. I think that getting input is very important so you make sure that a lot of people are interested in coming. Between Sima and I, we can get the job done. I am more of the planner and when it comes to Shabbat, I love to cook. Sima is great on the technical side, so she can help do the uploads for pictures and the goggle calendar, etc. We try to have a house meeting at least once a month to discuss what needs to be done for the month. Besides that, as I mentioned earlier, we correspond a lot by email to make sure we are on the same page with everything. Our main goal every month is get more people and more new people to come to our events. We know that when they come, they will of course have a good time :)
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