Current Social Justice Projects and Recipients

Collecting Socks this Thanksgiving with Gratitude Generation

BJBE Social Action along with JLC, ECC, and others are supporting Gratitude Generation's Warm Soles Sock Drive. Share this letter with the family and friends with whom you'll be spending Thanksgiving. Please ask your loved ones to bring socks to your Thanksgiving gathering(s), and then you can bring them to BJBE between December 2nd and 4th.

Avenues to Hope Initiative - October & November

The Moraine Township Food Pantry is requesting shampoo and/or conditioner. The Food Pantry requests standard sized containers, rather than the larger ones you might find at a Costco or Sam’s Club. Many of their clients are older or infirm and cannot manage heavier items well.

Please drop your donations in the Avenues to Hope compartment of the Tzedakah Nook in the Village Center

Bake Cookies for Project Nourish

This is a wonderful Tikkun Olam opportunity for congregants of all ages! Bake a batch of home-made cookies (no nuts or nut products, please) and bag by twos in Ziploc bags to be added to our lunches. 

Please label your outer bag with: 

  • Project Nourish
  • The date the cookies were baked 
  • The number of cookie bags inside 

Deliver cookies to the office or put them in the far right freezer in the kitchen. We will include the cookies the next time we prepare lunches. Click here to choose the date you'd like to volunteer. For questions, please email Merrilee

Coming Soon: Collecting Household Goods for a Refugee Family

BJBE has a long tradition of welcoming and supporting refugees who are new to Chicagoland, from co-sponsoring a young Afghan man and a Ukranian family to staffing the Deerfield Free Store to countless other efforts.

Our next effort will involve purchasing and collecting housold items to outfit a home for a newly-arrived refugee family. For this, we will be working with Exodus World Service

Stay tuned for more information about this effort in the coming weeks!

Recaps

Votor Postcarding Campaign

Thank you to everyone who participated in our three postcard writing parties and who took postcards home to complete. Between all of these, we wrote 600 postcards to Florida, 300 to Georgia, and 300 to Pennsylvania. We know from data the RAC has provided that these hand-written postcards do make a difference in persuading people to go to the polls. Thank you again for being a part of this effort.


Pack the Ark Campaign

BJBE has wrapped up our campaign to Pack the Ark Pantry. Thank you to everyone who filled up a bag and dropped it off. We covered the full floor of the container and started on a second layer in the back half. Great job! The Ark is very appreciative of our efforts.