The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation (NHC) Council met for the first time in many years to step away from the day-to-day running of NHC to focus on the future, discuss some of the “big picture” issues at hand and to envision the future we want. We met on June 9th and 10th 2024 and were fortunate to have Mike Eldon and Mary Wanja as experienced external facilitators.
In order to inform the conversations, a survey to the community was circulated to help the Council understand both the demographics of Jews in Kenya, as well as the top areas in which we both excel and need to improve. The data on demographics sharpened our understanding that our community is not made largely of any one nationality, type of Judaism, age or location. We are incredibly diverse along all of those categories and need to work hard to meet a wide diversity of needs and preferences. Key strengths of our current offerings were consistently identified as bringing the community together through kids events, holiday events and the Friday night dinners. The most repeated themes for improvement came through as needing to create an environment that is more inclusive of all types of Jews in Nairobi, with the most common requests focused on increasing women’s participation in services and egalitarian prayer options.
With this feedback in mind, we reviewed the mission and vision and refined them as follows:
Vision: We are a diverse and united, vibrant and welcoming center to celebrate Jewish life.
Mission: We provide religious services, social, educational, and cultural events, guided by our vision and supported by our values.
We identified and defined the following values that we want to guide NHC:
- – we are responsive to and inclusive, and respectful of the current and evolving needs of our community
- Shared responsibility – we are actively engaged in creating and implementing religious, social, cultural and educational opportunities
- – we thrive in a physically and financially secure community
- Trust – we demonstrate trust in one another, practice compromise and consensus building
- Tikkun Olam – we make the world a better place through acts of service within NHC and in the broader Kenyan community.
From there we cultivated a five-year vision for what we wanted NHC to look like in terms of people; products, services and members; systems and processes; and financial sustainability. Overall, the vision was one of a thriving community that had more staff, a culture of volunteerism – both external and internal to the community, a range of religious, educational and social offerings to satisfy the needs of the diversity of our members and financial assets to fund the community in a sustainable way. We also acknowledged that in order to make that vision become a reality we would need to make significant infrastructure improvements on the compound, in particular related to the Vermont Hall.
Finally, as we reflected on where we wanted to be in five-years, we committed to a one-year plan of action to move us in that direction. We re-formed the Council’s sub-committees, which are each tasked with different components of the plan. This includes, for example, making initial changes in the services, reviewing the events offerings and starting to explore plans for infrastructure upgrades.
Our sub-committees currently include:
Administration Building and grounds Communications
Fundraising Garden Human resources
Infrastructure improvement Legal Membership and engagement
Procurement, Religious affairs Security
Social/cultural/education Chevra Kadisha,
We are excited and energized by the possibilities of a bright future for the NHC. We invite anyone that wants to discuss further details to reach out to council members, or the community coordinator, for contacts of the council members.
We also need more volunteers! We encourage everyone to get involved in whichever piece of this plan is important and exciting for you. Please reach out to Whitney in the office by email: (nairobisynagogue@gmail.com) and/or phone: (+254797419401) and she can connect you to a committee or volunteer opportunity that’s best for you. We will need everyone in the community, not just the Council, to help make this vision a reality!
NAIROBI HEBREW CONGREGATION