Rabbi David Mendelson preparing an Italian feast for 2N families at the HAMAKOM Cohort meeting.
With Second Nurture, you're on this journey with friends at your side.
2N brings the community together in unique ways, engaging young adults, parents, teens,and older members in a multi-generational tapestry called the 2N Care Collective.
You are reading this because you and members of your community actively address issues that face our society. You may also know that kids aging out of foster care are a primary feeder into homelessness, sexual exploitation and trafficking and incarceration—issues you care about.
In our cities, tens of thousands of children rely on loving, capable and durable foster families. But there are not enough foster parents to meet the need and of those nearly 50% stop fostering within a year because the challenges they face far exceed the available support and resources.
Helping foster families succeed, strengthening the scaffolding kids need to thrive, means going “upstream” to prevent these outcomes. And your community has an important role.
There is an overflow of skills and talents in your community and it is natural, because of the values you hold, to share that abundance with those who are nurturing our most vulnerable children.
You provide support in three realms:
Community Lead
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Provide a volunteer “Community Lead”—a staff or community member—who is a liaison for 2N.
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This person has the knowledge and capacity needed to facilitate logistics for programming, internal communications and volunteers
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Monthly Cohort meetings
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Space for the gatherings
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One room for the parents’ meeting and an adjacent room and/or play space for the kids
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A meal for the meeting
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Prepared and laid out for the families by your members
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Volunteers to assist with child care
2N Care Collective members welcome foster families as they arrive for the monthly Cohort meeting with love and food. There, the foster parents join together with 2N’s Family Support Specialist in one space, and the kids enjoy their own programming in an adjacent space. The adult meeting is facilitated by 2N staff and the kids' space is overseen by a skilled volunteer (or paid professional if needed) and staffed by volunteers from your community. This has been a great joy for our current Host Communities because it brings together multiple generations into one space to play with the kids and run activities. Women in their 80’s sit, available for all the “watch me”s, and young people who run around and have fun. (Teens volunteer to fulfill their mitzvah volunteer hours, but so far none have stopped when their hours were met!)
These volunteers are part of your community’s 2N Care Collective. But there are more ways for members to be part of 2N. Your community is also a wealth of ongoing support to individual families in a wide variety of ad hoc and on-going ways, such as tutoring kids who struggle in school, helping with household needs for over-stretched parents and providing pro-bono professional skills. Some member families have also chosen to, themselves, foster and they join the Cohort!
A community member volunteers to be the 2N Community Lead. This person knows the community well and can help 2N with logistics and arrangements as well as with finding the right volunteers for families’ needs as they arise.
Imagine a foster parent gets a call. Can you take a sibling group of three—tomorrow? Who in your community can help the foster parent prepare the bedroom?
A foster parent is up to here with obstacles getting the educational services their child needs. Who in your community knows the public school system and can help the parent navigate it?
A child is struggling in math. Who in your community can tutor math?
A landlord has threatened eviction because they do not approve of the trans teen who joined a foster family. Who in your community is a housing attorney?
The real magic is in all the beautiful relationships through which everyone thrives.
Community Culture:
And! Clergy and educators have access to our robust Jewish materials and programming that highlight foster themes in our holidays, texts and traditions—resources that enlighten and inspire engagement in the Care Collective. If you are not a Jewish community, feel free to adapt our resources if that works for you!
The community weaves foster care and adoption into the cultural fabric so that adoption and fostering are highlighted values, making the Cohort families feel welcome, encouraging the HC membership to support foster families and to consider becoming foster families themselves. "Working with 2N as the Jewish Education Manager is an absolute dream! Growing up in a foster adoptive family, I experienced firsthand the power of love, resilience, and belonging, and now I have the incredible opportunity to give back to the community by helping families infuse their lives with Jewish values and traditions. Seeing people discover the beauty and depth of Jewish life—especially as it connects to building loving, nurturing families—is what fuels my passion every single day. Together, we’re creating spaces where everyone can find their place in the Jewish story, and that’s nothing short of transformational!"
Learn More About Our Community Culture
“I see more of my community members at the homes of foster families, dropping things off, helping out, than I do at services!”
Volunteer Support for Foster Families
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Tutoring kids who often struggle in school;
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Helping with household needs for harried parents;
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Providing professional skills such as navigating the educational system, providing therapeutic services and more —one synagogue member became a foster family’s pro bono veterinarian so their 2-year-old foster son could keep his puppy;
Educating community members to engage them as volunteers through Jewish text and tradition
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Adult, classroom and supplementary education exploring foster themes in Jewish texts
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Holiday programs that highlight foster themes in tradition
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Educational and training opportunities
