Mayor Esther Manheimer is challenging Asheville organizations to make a change and be recognized for moving Asheville towards a greener future. The Green Workplace Challenge encourages organizations to reduce the environmental impacts of their operations and buildings by engaging property owners, managers, and office tenants. This month, the Asheville JCC was chosen as a featured participant in the Green Workplace Challenge.
Here’s what the Green Workplace Challenge newsletter had to say about the Asheville Jewish Community Center’s efforts to participate in making our workplace more green:
The Asheville JCC recently started an initiative called “Go Yarok!” (Go Green). The goal of this new initiative is to more fully realize and teach Jewish values of environmental stewardship throughout JCC programming and by greening their campus. Currently, the JCC already has a program in place that teaches environmental education for young children through their Jewish themed garden. For Go Yarok, the JCC will begin by starting site-wide composting in all of their children’s programs. The AWC has fit in nicely with Go Yarok, because the Green Survey has been a good tool to help them identify other areas that they would like to immediately improve on, and ones they would like to work on in the future. The AWC has helped the JCC to create a more comprehensive vision of what Go Yarok can be.
As the JCC is in the process of expanding and upgrading their facilities, the AWC has provided them with ideas for how they would like to incorporate energy and resource saving practices into plans. In addition to greening up their facilities, the JCC is striving to be a model for how a community center can both include sustainable features and provide programming on environmental issues from both a practical and an ethical viewpoint. They hope that their members will use the JCC as a resource to promote greater sustainability in their own lives and as a place for the community to gather together to create a more sustainable community and city. The JCC also has a strong belief that by instilling Jewish values of environmental stewardship in their children members, they are building future leaders for sustainability.
We’re proud of our efforts to make Asheville more sustainable but still have a long way to go! If you have any ideas of how we can continue to lessen our footprint and contribute to rebuilding and repairing the earth, let us know!
Check out the Asheville Workplace Challenge here!
