Whitefield Shul ran two tracks for Mitzvah Day.

The first track, the Drive by Food Bank saw 13 teams who messaged friends and drove around to their houses playing mitzvah music from their cars, and in a socially distanced manner collected long life food items for the Charity GIFT, who run a Kosher food bank here in Manchester. They had special green sacks, stickers and green balloons on their car! The shul was also turned into a drive by food bank hub, whereby donors simply drove into the car park, and played food items on a table without even the need to exit their cars and keeping everything very Covid safe. Our Bar and Bat Mitzvah clubs were challenged to raise their age in Kilograms, 12 Kg for girls and 13 Kg for boys which their easily achieved! GIFT estimated that over £5000 worth of goods were collected that day, something they said was unprecedented for a community Mitzvah Day project.

The second, cookies for Smiles, we partnered with PJ library who read the story ‘the mitzvah magician’ to around 30 of our younger members. They then decorated a box filled with cookies to give to an assigned person living near their home to continue the theme of doing mitzvot and brining smiles to people’s faces. 
Both programmes were a great success!