Name: Samuel Curry-Levine
Social Justice Group: Homelessness—Communities of Color and Children
Date of Fieldwork: April 6, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Backpack Buddies at the Rodeph Shalom School
Type of Fieldwork: Tour of Organization
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :
On Wednesday, the 6th of April our group was able to go to Rodeph Shalom School to see the backpack buddy system. When we went there, we saw how they created the backpacks. It was shown that a long table contains multiple different meals and snacks. You would go down the table packing in the correct amount of food and snacks in the backpacks.
They even allowed us to pack the bags. Once we did it, we went back and packed a few. At the speed we were doing it at, it felt like we were all doing a marathon. In addition to how the system works, we understood why the bags were just black. We learned that the bags had no letters for the synagogues because they wanted to make the food anonymous. They believe that no kids should have to have attention be on them. They don’t want other kids to know these kids experience food insecurity or don’t know when their next food will come. It’s not right to have these kids feel like people feel bad for them and are giving them a gift because of that. It’s better for these kids to feel that they need to get these bags every time after school on Friday.
In addition to the backpack buddies, we learned that Rodeph Shalom School has a shelter downstairs in their synagogue. We went down and looked at the shelter. It was small, so they told us that usually they’d only have at most 8 men in their shelter. They told us that the men were more happy that people were respecting them rather than the conditions in their shelter. It has been hard because of the pandemic, so right not they haven’t been able to get volunteers to get some of the men. Some are afraid that the vaccination rate for some of the men are not as high as they wanted.
Overall, it was great that we got to learn about the backpack buddies system and the homeless shelter. We have Romy to thank for organizing this tour. But, it was really great getting to learn from experts who are helping to improve the human rights topic that our group is learning about this year.
