Grantee Spotlight: Meet Moving Traditions
SRE Network invests in strengthening the capacity of Jewish organizations through grantmaking so that Jewish communities will be strengthened, become more cohesive, experience healing, and have deeper trust in each other, their institutions, and leaders. Over the past six years, SRE has invested over $6.5M across 108 projects and 52 organizations through its grantmaking, technical assistance, and partnerships.
Throughout the year, we provide grants to outstanding Jewish organizations whose organizations and projects focus on advancing the safety, respect, and equity across North America’s Jewish communal landscape. Over the coming weeks, we will shine the spotlight on SRE's twelve extraordinary spring 2024 field building grant recipients.
We are excited to introduce you to Moving Traditions.
About Moving Traditions
Moving Traditions emboldens Jewish youth to thrive through the pursuit of personal well-being (shleimut), caring relationships (hesed), and a Jewish and feminist vision of equity and justice (tzedek). Combining positive psychology with Jewish values, we partner with Jewish institutions across North America to engage Jewish teens, families, and communities.
About the Grant
With a one-year grant, Moving Traditions will expand its CultureShift program, focused on supporting teens in building healthy relationships in the overnight camp environment, Jewish Youth Serving Organization programming, and travel programs.
Q&A with Moving Traditions
SRE: Why is Moving Traditions excited to receive this grant? What change do you hope this grant will bring to your organization and the important work it does?
MT: We are incredibly grateful to the SRE Network as its support of CultureShift has helped us collaborate with staff at camps, youth-serving organizations, and Israel teen trips to create a landscape where campers and teen staff can feel safe, respected, and equal. Studies have shown that camp involvement will likely impact children’s engagement in Jewish life well into adulthood—and we plan to bolster this trend by helping organizations serving youth to create safe and thriving environments and meaningful experiences.
Every Jewish context and educational environment has different challenges in terms of safety, equity, and respect. CultureShift is continuing to grow and evolve to address the needs and questions in specific environments that serve Jewish youth. This year, we focused our efforts on the needs of organizations facilitating Israel trips and bus trips. With this focus, we are able to expand our impact and build our resources so that we can support other institutions in similar contexts. In addition, we are using educational content from CultureShift on the topics of personal boundaries & consent and de-escalating conflict to enrich our new Teaching Assistant and Counsellor in Training programs.
SRE: How has being a member of SRE Network impacted Moving Traditions?
MT: Beyond the expansion of our CultureShift program, the SRE Network has given us access to resources and a network of like-minded organizations to share with and learn from. Moving Traditions strives to integrate our mission of shleimut (wholeness), hesed (kindness), and tzedek (justice) into our external programming and into our internal operations. Our membership with SRE Network has expanded our relationships to others in the field and added to the toolbox of skills that we use to pursue tzedek. We recently sent five staff members to the SRE Convening to learn and deepen our connections with other SRE member organizations—where we learned about how to use Sacred Spaces Keilim resources and had organizational values discussions with UpStart.
SRE: What is your hope for the future of the broader Jewish nonprofit landscape?
MT: Our work is to shift culture for anyone who works with Jewish youth. In the last few years, we have greatly expanded from work with synagogues to working with summer camps, youth movements, and independent teen programs. In future years, we intend to expand our work with these institutions, grow our work with day schools, and experiment with programs directly pitched to parents and teens. We hope that as our programs impact institutions across the Jewish nonprofit landscape, that we will contribute to making the Jewish community a more safe, respectful, and equitable community.
Most Jewish institutions cannot afford to design their own trainings on the issues that CultureShift addresses and we see our role as one where we can offer consulting, training, and ongoing curriculum to a wide variety of partners. In the coming years, we hope to support all Jewish nonprofits in providing training and in integrating values of safety, equity, and respect into daily practice.
Photos provided by Moving Traditions staff.
SRE Network promotes Jewish workplaces and communal spaces in becoming safe, respectful, and equitable through network building, resource sharing, and community investments. As a network of over 175 Jewish organizations, we are working towards a Jewish communal landscape where people are free from abuse, engage one another with dignity, and are treated fairly. Learn more at: www.srenetwork.org.