Tzedek (charity)

Last updated
Tzedek
Type INGO
Purpose Judaism, charity, Education poverty reduction
Headquarters Golders Green, London, United Kingdom
Region served
Worldwide
Key people
Kira Blumer (CEO), Steve Miller (Founder)
Affiliations Make Poverty History
Website www.tzedek.org.uk

Tzedek is a UK-based registered charity [1] organisation which aims to provide a Jewish response to the problem of extreme global poverty. Registered as a charity in 1993, [2] Tzedek has a number of overseas development programmes, working closely with local NGOs to alleviate extreme poverty in Northern Ghana and Northeast & Southeast India. As well as supporting local NGOs within these regions, Tzedek aims to develop the leadership skills of young Jewish leaders within the community to provide a long-term, sustainable solution to global poverty. [3]

Contents

Vision and mission

Tzedek's framework is based on the concept of tzedek, a Hebrew linguistic root word for justice. The word does not merely indicate legal rights but also compassion and humanity. [4] That is why, in the Jewish tradition, the word for charity is tzedakah. The Jewish values reflected in Tzedek's work include Ahavtah et HaGer (you shall love the stranger), which teaches a view of a global world without racial or religious boundaries; and, Naaseh v'nishma (we will do and we will understand), which holds that awareness and knowledge lead to actions with deeper commitment. [5] It is because of this that Tzedek believes that the UK Jewish community can be at the forefront of the challenge to reduce extreme poverty abroad.

Tzedek seeks to provide a point of contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, by engaging the UK Jewish community with sustainable development projects overseas to non-Jewish beneficiaries. The charity's work particularly focuses on impacting the livelihoods of women and young people, as research suggests that this provides the longest lasting impact within communities.

Tzedek believes that poverty is a man-made problem and can only be solved by fighting for social justice. Tzedek's initiatives, therefore, are twofold:

  1. Developing strong, sustainable partnerships with local NGOs to empower communities and tackle poverty. These projects are predominantly focused in Northern Ghana and Northeast & Southeast India and focus on increasing access to education and improving vocational skills of the local population. [6]
  2. To raise awareness within the UK Jewish community of global poverty to increase a sense of global social responsibility. Through education and developing the leadership skills of young Jewish leaders, Tzedek can provide a platform for social responsibility ambassadors within the community to organise and create meaningful change. [7]

Present work

Ghana

Tzedek's primary work in Ghana involves reducing extreme poverty in the Tolon District of Northern Ghana. Their work within this region aims to create sustainable changes in livelihood, by improving the standards of education and youth empowerment within the communities. There is a strong emphasis on working in coordination with local individuals and organisations within the region in order to understand and to the most significant local issues

Examples of initiatives Tzedek have supported in Ghana include:

India

Tzedek's work in India focuses on four main regions: Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The majority of the charity's work within India consists of funding sustainable poverty relief by partnering with and supporting local NGOs. By empowering these local organisations with self-sustaining livelihood projects, this has a long-term impact on the communities.

The projects that Tzedek fund in India fall into the following categories:

Programmes

History

Tzedek's beginnings trace back to the spring of 1990, when a group of activists held a series of open seminars on global issues entitled 'Tzedek'. As a result of these seminars, in the autumn of 1990, Tzedek was launched as an organisation with a commitment to adhering to Jewish values and engaging with sustainable development work. In the early stages of Tzedek, projects were supported in South India, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Swaziland (now known as Eswatini) and a series of public seminars were held to improve awareness of these issues within the UK. [16]

Being officially recognised as a charity in 1993 [2] and continuing to expand, by 1995, Tzedek organised their inaugural volunteering expedition, where five volunteers travelled to Zimbabwe to co-ordinate and work alongside the local community. In the following years, the scope of Tzedek work's expanded to West Bengal, Kenya, Ghana, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Nigeria.

In 2007, Tzedek won a significant three-year grant from the Department of International Development (DFID) for their work in education, that was later matched by the Pears Foundation.

In 2017, Tzedek made the decision to solely focus their overseas work in Northern Ghana and Northeast & Southeast India, in order to provide more sophisticated and detailed sustainable development projects for local communities.

Tzedek's work has been widely recognised around the world. The charity's founder, Steve Miller, was nominated for the Charity Times Outstanding Individual Achievement Award in 2010 [17] for his work in setting up Tzedek and he was also quoted at a multifaith conference as part of the Jubilee Debt Campaign. [18] The Chair of Tzedek, Jonathan Middleburgh, was also awarded for outstanding leadership at the Jewish Volunteering Network's Heartbeat of the Community Awards in 2018. [19] The Jewish Chronicle [20] [21] have often recognised and applauded the work of Tzedek.

Tzedek also hold regular fundraising events, such as an annual comedy evening at the Arts Depot showcasing the best of UK Jewish comedy. [22] Tzedek is also a member of the Make Poverty History coalition. [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voluntary Service Overseas</span> International development charity

Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is a not-for-profit international development organization charity with a vision for "a fair world for everyone" and a mission to "create lasting change through volunteering". VSO delivers development impact through a blended volunteer model consisting of international, national, and community volunteers working together to develop the systems and conditions for positive social change. In 2018–19, VSO worked in 23 countries in Africa and Asia.

The Hunger Project (THP), founded in 1977 with the stated goal of ending world hunger in 25 years, is an organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. It has ongoing programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where it implements programs aimed at mobilizing rural grassroots communities to achieve sustainable progress in health, education, nutrition, and family income. THP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization incorporated in the state of California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WaterAid</span> International NGO, focused on water, sanitation and hygiene

WaterAid is an international non-governmental organization, focused on water, sanitation and hygiene. It was set up in 1981 as a response to the UN International Drinking Water decade (1981–1990). As of 2018, it was operating in 34 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islamic Relief</span> International aid agency based in Birmingham, UK

Islamic Relief Worldwide is a faith-inspired humanitarian and development agency which is working to support and empower the world's most vulnerable people.

Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR)(Danish: Den danske komité for hjælp til afghanske flygtninge) is a non-political, non-governmental, non-profit humanitarian and development organization working to improve the lives of the Afghan people since 1984.

The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, which operates under the name World Jewish Relief, is a British Jewish charitable organisation and is the main Jewish overseas aid organisation in the United Kingdom. World Jewish Relief was formed in 1933 as a support group to German Jews under Nazi rule and played a major role in organising the Kindertransport which rescued around 10,000 German and Austrian children from Nazi Europe. After the war, the organisation brought 732 child Holocaust survivors to Britain; the first 300 are known as The Windermere Children and collectively they are known as The Boys. Currently, World Jewish Relief functions as one of Britain's leading development organizations, working with Jewish and non-Jewish communities alike. World Jewish Relief operates programmes mainly in the former Soviet Union but also in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) was a demonstration project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the United Nations Development Programme, and Millennium Promise aimed at proving that its integrated approach to rural development can be used to achieve the Millennium Development Goals—eight globally endorsed targets that address the problems of poverty, health, gender equality, and disease—by 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">InterVol</span> UK charity

InterVol is a community volunteering charity based in the United Kingdom. InterVol support poverty reduction, conservation and education projects globally, as well as community volunteering based on university campuses in the United Kingdom. The charity is based at the University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, Lancaster University, University of Nottingham, and Oxford Brookes University.

Platform2 was an international volunteering programme for young people in the United Kingdom. It was run by a coalition of Christian Aid and BUNAC, and was funded by the Department for International Development of the UK government. Volunteers took part in 10-week community projects in countries such as South Africa, Ghana, India, Nepal and Peru.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tree Aid</span> UK non-governmental organisation operating in Africa

Tree Aid is an international development non-governmental organisation which focuses on working with people in the Sahel region in Africa to tackle poverty and the effects of climate change by growing trees, improving people's incomes, and restoring and protecting land. It is a registered charity in the UK. Tree Aid has offices in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in Mali, in Ethiopia, in Ghana, and in Bristol, United Kingdom. It currently has programmes running in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Niger. Areas of Tree Aid's work include forest governance, natural resource management, food security and nutrition, and enterprise development. Tree Aid reported in their annual impact report 2019/20, that since 1987 it had grown 22 million trees, worked with 1.8 million people, and supported 36,350 people in enterprise groups.

Blue Ventures is a social enterprise and registered charity focused on nurturing locally led marine conservation. The organisation partners with coastal communities that depend on marine resources.

Relief International is a humanitarian non-profit agency that provides emergency relief, economic rehabilitation, and development assistance services to vulnerable communities worldwide. Relief International UK is non-political and non-sectarian in its mission. It is based in Washington, D.C., and London.

PHASE is a partnership between several international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) registered in Austria, Nepal, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA). The organisations specialise in improving health and education services and livelihood opportunities for disadvantaged populations and most of this work takes place in Nepal. The acronym, PHASE, stands for "Practical Help Achieving Self Empowerment" and describes the working ethic of the organisations.

The Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) is the largest non-governmental organization working to alleviate poverty in North West Pakistan. It was established in 1989 with the aim of reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable means of livelihood in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. SRSP is part of the Rural Support Programmes (RSP's) initiated by United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Award winner Shoaib Sultan Khan. It is now the largest regional RSP, with extensive outreach into communities. In recent years because of its vast outreach, SRSP has had to play a prominent role in disasters that have hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As a result, humanitarian work along with development has become a core competency of the organization.

Tevel b’Tzedek is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Israel that promotes sustainable development in developing countries through the formation of thematic-based groups and community mobilization. It was established in 2007 by Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, who wanted to provide young Jewish people with meaningful social justice experience abroad with the intention of creating strong Jewish leaders invested in the idea of Tikkun Olam. Since 2007, hundreds of Jewish volunteers from communities in Israel, the United States, Germany, Ukraine, South Africa, Australia and other countries have traveled to Nepal and Haiti to participate in community development projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ripples Foundation</span> US-based non-governmental organization

Ripples Foundation is a US based non-governmental organization that works primarily with women in the countries of Nigeria, Madagascar, and Ghana to alleviate extreme poverty in Africa. The organization often partners with other organizations in order to meet its goals of "supporting women in distress, promoting inclusion and community cohesion, and working to raise levels of tolerance through education, art, sports, and culture."

Pod Volunteer is a non-governmental volunteering organisation with an associated registered charity based in the United Kingdom.

Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) is an international Muslim aid NGO based in the United Kingdom, and is the third largest Muslim charity in the UK. It was established in 2003, and aims to deliver aid to the poor and vulnerable, as well as education for the Muslim community. It specialises in humanitarian support, international development, emergency aid and disaster relief in some of the world's most deprived areas.

Parivartan Sandesh Foundation is an Indian non-governmental organisation operating in the state of New Delhi working for the betterment and development of deprived and marginalized population through promoting various programs in India to ensure right to education, access to health services, empowering adolescents through vocational skills to have better livelihood chances & spreading awareness of social issues. It was founded in 2010

References

  1. ↑ "Charity Overview". Charity Commission. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  2. 1 2 "Charity framework". apps.charitycommission.gov.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  3. ↑ "Our Work". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  4. ↑ Elkins, Dov Peretz. (2013). Bible's top 50 ideas : the essential concepts everyone should know. [Place of publication not identified]: Wipf & Stock Publishers. ISBN   978-1625642592. OCLC   952547478.
  5. ↑ WJEC Eduqas GCSE religious studies. White, Joy, 1955-, Owens, Chris,, Pawson, Ed,, Ridley, Amanda. London. 28 October 2016. ISBN   9781471866340. OCLC   1062323100.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ↑ "Partnerships". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  7. ↑ "Leadership Development". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  8. ↑ "The Ben Azzai Programme". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  9. ↑ "Social Responsibility Week to encourage charity outside the community". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  10. ↑ Reporter, Jewish News. "The young leader inspiring the community to look beyond its own backyard". jewishnews.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  11. ↑ "Go Develop". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  12. ↑ "The Overseas Project Team". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  13. ↑ "Schools Twinning Programme". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  14. ↑ "'Excellent' Naima impresses inspectors". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  15. ↑ "Schlep!". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  16. ↑ "Vision & Mission". Tzedek. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  17. ↑ "Charity Times Awards categories". www.charitytimes.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  18. ↑ "Jubilee Debt Campaign UK". Jubilee Debt Campaign UK. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  19. ↑ "Top volunteers enjoy night in the spotlight". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  20. ↑ "Where the Big Society happens". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  21. ↑ "Older kind of 'gap year'". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  22. ↑ "Tzedek's Comedy Evening 2019 | artsdepot". www.artsdepot.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  23. ↑ "MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY http". 2008-08-20. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.