Social Justice Opportunites
Family Promise
Family Promise is a non-profit organization committed to helping low-income families achieve lasting independence. Their long term vision is to have a nation in which every family has a home, a livelihood and a chance to build a better future. Sukkat Shalom and First Presbyterian Church have partnered to share the responsibility of meeting those needs.
Sukkat Shalom hosts Family Promise one week each summer; this year, our hosting week will be May 24-May 31. Tony Rothschild and Jim Jacobs head Sukkat Shalom's Family Promise efforts. If you would like to be included in the notices that they put out soliciting assistance for our hosting weeks, please contact Tony at arothschild@mrdlaw.com.
There are three functions that volunteers can perform:
- First, we need assistance to set up the rooms before our guests arrive and then to clean up the rooms when they leave.
- Second, you can cook and serve dinner for our guests.
- Finally, we need two adults to spend the night at the temple building while the guests are there to assure their comfort and safety. Hosting dinners is a particularly good opportunity for whole families to participate; in addition to designing a menu for the evening and preparing the meal, hosts also get the chance to eat with our guests, and host children always seem to enjoy the chance to play with our guest children.
Stock the Shelves
Stock the Shelves provides what food stamps won't and what stretched incomes can't cover by giving Chicago area refugees and their families the household and hygiene supplies they need to lead thriving lives. Despite their best efforts, many refugees strain each month to stretch their earnings to purchase the indispensable household and hygiene supplies food stamps don’t cover. Striving to close that gap, every fourth Wednesday of the month, Stock the Shelves drives a truck filled with the 15 items refugees need (and the only items we accept!) to the Indo-American Center in Rogers Park, where volunteers set up a mini-store stocked with new, unopened items.
Click here to register to volunteer, or click here to donate much needed items.
The Night Ministry
The night ministry connects with Chicago’s most vulnerable by providing basic supplies, free health care, housing and self-care resources. Sukkat Shalom partners with Night Ministry each year to provide hygiene bags to those in need.
Share the Harvest
Annual Thanksgiving Collection
Our congregation will be sponsoring families in need (identified through local agencies) during the Thanksgiving holiday. The STH committee will collect your baskets, bags or gift cards prior to the Family School before Thanksgiving. Your generous donations will be distributed to families in need. Questions? Contact us.
Maot Chitim
Maot Chitim refers to the custom of gathering wheat and providing the poor with matzah to observe Passover. This mitzvah has been expanded to provide food for families in need on Passover as well as Rosh Hashanah.
To learn more or add your name to the volunteer list email sukkatshalom@sukkatshalom.org
