Jewish Center youngsters will host a fundraiser for Darfur refugees that will demonstrate solar cookers.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The seventh grade students at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue are taking their bar and bat mitzvah obligations of tzdekah, or charitable tasks, to heart by taking part in the Jewish World Watch’s Solar Cooker Project this month. The students will host a fundraiser at the synagogue Monday, May 31, to demonstrate the power of solar cookers and to raise money to purchase them for refugees from the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.
Organized by Malibu High School graduate Jamie Briskin, the youngsters will stage a festival featuring food booths, including food cooked in solar cookers, African jewelry-making workshops, live music and photo booths that create postcards for Jewish World Watch’s Darfur Justice Project. The Solar Cooker Project is part of JWW’s national effort to raise awareness of the plight of Darfur refugees, including a fundraising event June 7 called “Walk for Darfur.”
“I joined the Jewish World Watch because they are so effective in helping people suffering from genocides around the world,” said Briskin, who will begin working on her master’s degree in social work at UCLA in the fall. “Places like Darfur and the Congo have seen such horrific injustice. Our kids wanted to help with the Solar Cooker Project because it really empowers the women of these regions and is environmentally good as well.”
The Darfur region of Sudan has been frayed by civil war since 2003, when tribal groups clashed with Sudanese military and the infamous Janjaweed-ethnic militias who practice terrorism by brutally attacking civilians and destroying villages.
In Darfur, women are forced to stay in camps because when traveling beyond their compounds to search for food or firewood they are subject to kidnapping and rape, if not murder, by marauding Janjaweed.
Since the conflict began, an estimated half million people have been killed and more than 2.5 million displaced.
Many of those displaced have fled to neighboring Chad, where the search for cooking fuel can take up half a day by refugee women who live there.
“The Jewish World Watch’s goal is to provide two solar cookers per family to families in camps in Iridimi (Chad),” Briskin said. “When the women don’t have to leave camps to search for firewood, it is a way to empower them.”
Rachel Andres is the director of the Solar Cooker Project for Jewish World Watch and said the nonprofit is currently assisting three refugee camps in Chad, a task of increased responsibility since Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir expelled international aid agencies from the country in March after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant against him for war crimes.
“The solar cookers cost $15 each,” Andres said. “So, for just $30, one family has the means to cook ‘le boule’-or grain-and the sauce for their meals.”
The cookers themselves look like oversized, foil-covered panels unfolded like origami. They captured and direct solar rays to food placed inside them. In fuel-scarce regions, the cookers save lives, while being powered by a free, renewable resource-the sun.
Rabbi Carrie Benveniste is the director of education for MJCS and credits the seventh grade youngsters entirely for the idea of the May 31 festival.
“These kids wanted to do a meaningful project before their bar mitzvahs that would show that small efforts create a much greater whole,” Benveniste said. “Of course, the seventh-grade world view is that it needs to be fun, so we’re bringing a little bit of Africa to Malibu.”
Benveniste said every penny taken in at the festival goes toward the purchase of solar cookers.
“We have an old saying: ‘We take care of other people because no one took care of us in the Holocaust,'” Benveniste said. “That doesn’t resonate as much with children from this generation. But they do understand that to be a good Jewish person you must help someone outside yourself. So they are really excited about the festival.”
The Darfur Justice Festival will take place Sunday, May 31, 11a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, 24855 PCH. Entry fee is $5.