by Eli Winkelman for
ejewishphilanthropy.com
As the founding executive of Challah for Hunger
transitioning my primary affiliation to a Board role, I wanted to bring you into
the world as I see it at this point.
Back
in 2004, during my first year at Scripps College, I began baking challah with
friends, just for fun. Others joined in, and week after week people came back,
complaining that “their friends ate all their challah.” Something clicked:
people liked learning to bake challah; others wanted to buy the loaves. And so
the first chapter of Challah for Hunger was born.
Since then, we’ve grown, purely by word of mouth, to more than 60 chapters in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. Our volunteers bake creatively flavored challah, sell it, and donate the profits to social justice organizations. Chapters give half their proceeds to one shared cause, and each chapter’s volunteers act as a giving circle to allocate the other half. Over the past nine years, we’ve raised nearly half a million dollars for organizations including American Jewish World Service, the Blue Mountain Humane Society, Sharsheret, and Projecto Jardin.
For the last nine years, I’ve had the privilege to serve as Challah Enthusiasm Officer. Many nonprofits declare a vision to put themselves “out of business.” Challah for Hunger is not one of them. Our volunteers practice teamwork, hone skills (from kitchen navigation to tzedakah allocation), build bridges within the Jewish community and beyond, and most importantly to me at this time, make meaningful connections. Why would we ever want to go “out of business”?
Continue reading.
Back
in 2004, during my first year at Scripps College, I began baking challah with
friends, just for fun. Others joined in, and week after week people came back,
complaining that “their friends ate all their challah.” Something clicked:
people liked learning to bake challah; others wanted to buy the loaves. And so
the first chapter of Challah for Hunger was born. Since then, we’ve grown, purely by word of mouth, to more than 60 chapters in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. Our volunteers bake creatively flavored challah, sell it, and donate the profits to social justice organizations. Chapters give half their proceeds to one shared cause, and each chapter’s volunteers act as a giving circle to allocate the other half. Over the past nine years, we’ve raised nearly half a million dollars for organizations including American Jewish World Service, the Blue Mountain Humane Society, Sharsheret, and Projecto Jardin.
For the last nine years, I’ve had the privilege to serve as Challah Enthusiasm Officer. Many nonprofits declare a vision to put themselves “out of business.” Challah for Hunger is not one of them. Our volunteers practice teamwork, hone skills (from kitchen navigation to tzedakah allocation), build bridges within the Jewish community and beyond, and most importantly to me at this time, make meaningful connections. Why would we ever want to go “out of business”?
Continue reading.
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