Sukkot in April Home Repair Program
Each year since 1992, Yachad has sponsored the Washington area's largest Jewish program of hands-on housing rehabilitation. On the last Sunday of April, Yachad organizes hundreds of Jewish volunteers from synagogues and Jewish organizations to renovate the homes of area residents who are too elderly, disabled or poor to keep up with the needed repairs themselves.

Sukkot in April has grown into a significant force in the Washington, D.C. community. Jewish volunteers have renovated over 120 homes and other community facilities. Sukkot in April volunteers tackle problems ranging from broken windows, leaking roofs and rotting floors to inadequate bathrooms and faulty electrical systems.

The benefits to homeowners are great-their homes are made cleaner, safer, and more comfortable. But the benefits to Sukkot in April volunteers are also significant. For one Sunday each year, they have a unique opportunity to work in neighborhoods many rarely see. Participants gain a tangible sense not only of neighborhood problems, but equally important, of the neighborhood strengths and resources that can be brought to bear to help fix those problems.

Sukkot in April volunteers discover firsthand the joy of doing something to improve the lives of others in a lasting and tangible way. Yachad mobilizes many different kinds of volunteers-adult synagogue members, singles groups, religious schools, and confirmation classes. What they all share is a unique experience of putting "tikkun olam"-repairing the world-into action in their own community.

Due to the enormous success of Sukkot in April in the Washington, D.C. area, Yachad is expanding the program to other cities throughout the country. For more information, contact Yachad.

Yachad appreciates its partnership with Rebuilding Together, Inc. We are also grateful for the enthusiastic participation of the following synagogues and Jewish organizations:

Adas Israel Congregation, Washington, D.C.
Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, MD
Bet Aviv, Columbia, MD
Beth El Hebrew Congregation, Alexandria, VA
Beth Shalom of Howard County, Columbia, MD
Beth Shalom Congregation, Potomac, MD
Bethesda Jewish Congregation, Bethesda, MD
B'nai Israel Congregation, Rockville, MD
Columbia Jewish Congregation, Columbia, MD
Congregation Bet Mishpachah, Washington, D.C.
Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County, Bethesda, MD
Congregation Beth Emeth, Herndon, VA
Congregation B'nai Tzedeck, Potomac, MD
Congregation Etz Hayim, Arlington, VA
Congregation Har Shalom, Potomac, MD
Congregation Olam Tikvah, Fairfax, VA
Kehilah Chadasha, Bethesda, MD
Kol Hmi - NVRC, Arlington, VA
Kol Shalom Congregation, North Bethesda, MD
Ohr Kodesh Congregation, Chevy Chase, MD
Oseh Shalom Congregation, Laurel, MD
Shaare Tefila Congregation, Silver Spring, MD
Shaare Torah, Gaithersburg, MD
Temple Beth Ami, Potomac, MD
Temple Emanuel, Kensington, MD
Temple Isaiah, Columbia, MD
Temple Micah, Washington, D.C.
Temple Rodef Shalom, Falls Church, VA
Temple Shalom, Chevy Chase, MD
Temple Sinai, Washington, D.C.
Tifereth Israel Congregation, Washington, D.C.
Tikvat Israel, Rockville, MD
Washington Hebrew Congregation, Washington, D.C.

Behrend Builders of the D.C. Jewish Community Center, Washington, D.C.
Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, Rockville, MD
Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington
National Council of Jewish Women, Howard County chapter, Howard County, MD
The Weissberg Foundation

Over the past decade, Yachad has worked with community development organizations, churches and other non-profits to help finance more than 200 units of housing. In each of these cases, Yachad’s financial assistance was either the early seed money to initiate a project or a small bridge loan that kept a project going during the construction phase. Though this assistance is not measured in millions of dollars, but in thousands, it works.

Yachad is also working every day to organize Jewish volunteers, either skilled real estate professionals or unskilled enthusiasts to help with the planning or actual renovation of housing and commercial buildings in lower-income neighborhoods throughout the District of Columbia. Yachad offers a full range of hands on technical assistance to help small start-up to medium non-profit developers build skills to take on challenging projects. Such intensive mentoring is rarely available for free: Yachad offers it at no charge.

Beginning in 1997, Yachad resources have been focused on forming partnerships with minority churches that are engaging in neighborhood transformation. The Faith-to-Faith Community Development Program is a partnership between Yachad and minority churches engaged in revitalizing city neighborhoods. This interfaith and interracial collaboration provides organized opportunities for the Jewish community to partner with churches to build a strong community development capacity within each church.

Faith-to-Faith churches take a lead role in creating affordable housing for families, delivering support services, and developing commercial amenities for neighborhood residents. Yachad offers Faith-to-Faith partners advanced technical assistance and small amounts of seed capital to nurture these development efforts. We work to ensure that Faith-to-Faith partners have the technical capability to take on challenging real estate projects. We enlist experienced practitioners in the Jewish community to work with our partners, including bankers, lawyers, architects, real estate developers and community development experts. We also help synagogues build independent relationships with the churches to work jointly on social action activities.

Yachad's Faith-to-Faith Partnerships provide the avenue for synagogues and churches to work toward meaningful bricks and mortar change, while at the same time creating opportunities for rich dialogue and mutual understanding between communities.

Faith–to–Faith Accomplishments:

Since the program's inception in 1997, Yachad has worked with seven churches in the District of Columbia.

The Living Word Church
The Far Southwest/Southeast Community Development Corporation
4101 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20032

Located in the southern tip of the District of Columbia's Ward 8, east of the Anacostia River, the Living Word Church created The Far Southwest/Southeast Community Development Corporation in 1998. The CDC focuses on balancing economic and housing development with overall environmental and community sustainability. In the summer of 2002, the CDC, Yachad and a team of Jewish real estate professionals began the transformation of a blighted, vacant commercial corridor in the community. One year later on June 12, 2003 Yachad celebrated a milestone. On that day, Mayor Anthony Williams cut the ribbon to officially open the Tech Zone at 3939 South Capitol Street, SW. The newly renovated facility is the first commercial project completed as part of our Faith-to-Faith neighborhood development program. The Living Word Church and the Far SW-SE Community Development Corporation took on this challenging development. We supported them with legal and architectural services, fundraising support including critical no-interest loans and a final grant. The new building is spectacular. A community eyesore – an abandoned drugstore – has been transformed into a thriving community center, with a state of the art video conferencing center and computer training lab, after-school tutoring rooms and other attractive. An initial $20,000 loan from Yachad helped to leverage over 2 million dollars in private and public grants and loans.

Emory United Methodist Church
Beacon of Light Community Development Corporation
6100 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20011

Emory United Methodist Church located in the northwest quadrant of the District of Columbia created the Beacon of Light Community Development Corporation to serve as a catalyst for community change. The CDC is embarking on a major community revitalization initiative to refurbish a corridor of upper Georgia Avenue, N.W. The area is called the "Shalom Zone". Neglected for almost 25 years, Georgia Avenue has suffered from a dwindling community and economic development presence. The Beacon of Light offers the promise of change.

To date, congregants from Emory United along with several synagogues and other Jewish volunteers, including the D.C. Jewish Community Center have turned the aging parsonage house into a community service center. Another church-owned property was renovated from a warehouse into a small social hall.

In the spring of 2004, the Beacon of Light and Yachad are again planning for big changes along Georgia Avenue. This time the focus is on “the diamonds in the church’s backyard.” That is, Yachad is working with the Beacon of Light to once again transform the former parsonage house into a larger more accommodating space for transitional housing, community services, offices and even some commercial space.

Mount Carmel Christian Faith Center
The Olive Branch Community Development Corporation
4100 Illinois Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C

Mount Carmel Christian Faith Center is located in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The Olive Branch CDC is the church’s nonprofit development arm focused on acquiring and renovating the single-family rowhouses that dominate this wonderful family neighborhood. The objective is to purchase these homes and rent them to low-income families in the community. In the summer of 2003, the church purchased its first rowhouse, two doors away from the church. The home was in need of major repairs to update the kitchen, bath and redo carpeting, cracked drywall and other safety concerns. Yachad volunteers and church members worked during Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend 2004 to strip the house of old carpet, outdated wall paneling, old kitchen and bathroom cabinets and fixtures enabling skilled tradespeople to complete the renovations.

Yachad has also worked with other District of Columbia churches. They are:

• Shiloh Baptist Church
• Meridian Hill Baptist Church
• Covenant Baptist Church
• 13th Street Church of Christ
• Walker Memorial Baptist Church

We welcome new participants in this extraordinary program!

An important aspect of Yachad's mission is to create opportunities for the Jewish community to learn more about affordable housing and community development.

Yachad provides speakers for synagogue social action events to discuss the goals and benefits of community development projects. More formal Yachad-sponsored conferences of opinion leaders from various Jewish organizations have advocated community development as part of a social action agenda, and have offered practical advice for moving from good intentions into real action.

In order to provide a real world perspective, Yachad conducts guided tours to provide an up-close look at community development projects in action. The tours offer a view of the need for housing and economic revitalization in troubled local communities and provide a hopeful perspective of what can be done to renovate ailing urban neighborhoods.

Yachad has developed several educational programs to reinforce and inspire the spirit of community involvement among Jewish youth. These include two curricula for religious school teachers to use in the classroom. The first, for use during Sukkot, gives younger children the opportunity to reflect on the need for safe, affordable housing for everyone. The second provides teens who participate in Yachad’s annual Sukkot in April program a context for the work they do on Sukkot in April day. Jewish teens ages 15 and up may also participate in Ramp it Up! – with Yachad!, our new week-long summer program. Participants spend most of the day building an access ramp for a low-income Washington area homeowner with disabilities. They also spend part of the day engaging in learning about the housing and other needs of people with disabilities and the Jewish values underlying the Jewish community’s commitment to tikkun olam. Click here to learn more about the Ramp it Up! program.