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hat does it take to produce a magazine issue on social action? Let’s start with community: where the creativity and ideas are brewing. Connecting around these ideas, community members identify common challenges, in the hopes that they can then seek informed solutions. The PresenTense Issue 13: Social Action community encompasses writers and editors, artists and innovators, who formed a network reaching from Jerusalem to St. Louis to Nepal. As with any community, the social actions within this one benefitted the whole. The connections— visible on our contributor’s map (see “PresenTense in Action!” p. 2)— enabled reciprocity and sharing, in particular through peer-editing, where writers edited fellow writers’ work.
today and tensions within the field of social action work. We would like to share these burning issues with you in a form which can be shared over Twitter (each is less than 140 characters) to encourage you to spread the word, and to show you how these challenges frame and are in conversation with the content that ultimately we produced in the issue.
The backbone of the community, PresenTense’s Social Action Steering Committee, guided the process of production of this magazine by brainstorming challenges facing social activists
When we unite from individuals into a community, small actions accumulate and together can change the world!
Want to get involved with our community? We are always looking for creative writers, editors, and steering committee members. Email editor@presentense.org for details. Want to support our community’s continued production of the in-print product you hold in your hands? Subscribe at www.presentense.org/magazine/subscribe— and please spread the word.
PresenTense: What are the tensions and challenges in the field of social action? #CharityChallenges @Anya_Manning
Maya_Politis: Reinventing the wheel. So many do great work, but instead of combining their passion and minds, all are competing for the same funds. Anya_Manning: Embracing innovation and entrepreneurship in the nonprofit field without spawning unnecessary/duplicative organizations Anya_Manning: Better coordinating the social action organizations that DO exist to increase efficiency and further all our missions #SIACH @p. 22 Mollie_Gerver: Building alliances with those with different goals but similar values and different values but similar goals. #JEWISH SOCIAL ACTION FORUM @p. 21 Simone_Abel: Taking on only issues where I know I can actually achieve change, or those that are important but where creating change is more difficult.
Anya_Manning: Realizing that change may take years, even decades. But if we stop to address direct need faced today, the problems will continue. #DIFFERENT MODELS @p. 38
is program and education associate at Repair the World. She joined as an Insight Fellow, through which she previously worked at Dor Chadash and at The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Prior, Anya worked as resident advisor and educator for Kivunim, a one-year precollege program for Diaspora Jews. In 2010, Anya was named a Nahum Goldmann Fellow and traveled to Croatia to meet with other fellows from around the world. A graduate of Barnard College and The Jewish Theological Seminary and a native of Natick, MA, Anya currently lives in Manhattan with her husband, Elie.
@Mollie_Gerver
moved to Raanana, Israel with her parents in high school, lived throughout Israel during her military service, and later moved to Jerusalem for university, where she founded Advocates for Asylum to raise awareness among policymakers and the public about why refugees fled to Israel from Eritrea, South Sudan, Darfur, the DRC and other areas of conflict and oppression. Mollie was a 2010 PresenTense Global Fellow, and is now a JDC Service Corp fellow in Rwanda at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
issue thirteen 2011
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