Third Year of Jewish Education Innovation Challenge Grants Announced
Source: Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation
The Mayberg Family Foundation has announced the third year of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC), a grant initiative designed to stimulate and reward innovation in Jewish middle and high school education in North America. During the past two years JEIC has funded and researched four new models for Jewish education created by talented educators, enabling them to field test paradigm shifting programs in Jewish day schools. JEIC provides $50,000, along with research and consulting services to give grantees optimal chances for success and to glean lessons for other innovators to build upon.
JEIC searches for programs that share our values, including:
- Challenging students assumptions about Judaism in a respectful way
- Development of Hashem-centered students
- Helping to form Jewish identity
- Deep thinking about Judaic texts and ideas
- Connection of Judaism with emotional memory and sacred habits
- Programs that create a Jewish context for resilience and adaptability
- Programs that move student’s locus of control from outside to inside
- Programs that transforms students over the span of the year in a way that students and teachers recognize
- Ways to engage students that sustains the engagement over time
- Sufficient time on task (must meet at least four times a week for 45 minutes or more each time)
JEIC consists of three rounds. The first round is open Letters of Intent, at the end of which up to 18 applicants will be asked to submit full proposals and will be awarded $1,000 each. After the second round, up to 6 finalists will be required to attend an innovators retreat on May 21st and 22nd and will each be guaranteed a $3,600 grant to help defray travel costs. The top grant will be for up to $50,000.
The Jewish Education Innovation Challenge (JEIC) is a grantmaking initiative designed to disrupt complacency and encourage innovation in Jewish day school education. By rewarding and collaborating with talented innovators, JEIC seeks to improve the way Jewish values, literacy, practice and belief are transferred to the next generation. The project’s ultimate success will be the creation and implementation of revolutionary, practical educational models that are sustainable, accountable and scalable.
Letters of Interest are due at 11:59pm, December 10, 2014. Read through the JEIC website for details and application instructions.