HAVE YOU EVER WANTED TO WORK ON A FARM FOR JUST ONE DAY? Are you an aspiring agrarian looking for hands-on experience? Are you a Local Foods enthusiast who enjoys being outside and getting your hands dirty? Do you want to be part of a cooperative agrarian community? Then you should join the Ithaca Crop Mob!

WHAT’S CROP MOBBING? A Crop Mob is an event held once a month at a different farm each month. Members of the “mob” show up prepared to lend a hand to the host farm for a morning or afternoon. Possible tasks include but are not limited to: weeding, rock picking, “gleaning” (harvesting crops that would otherwise go unharvested), tree or transplant planting, putting up fencing, setting up a hoop house, etc  At the end of the work party a meal is provided, usually by the host farm, and farmers and mobbers eat together.

WHO CAN BE A CROP MOBBER? Anyone can be a crop mobber. Crop mobs are composed of farmers, college students, CSA families, local foods enthusiasts, gardeners, farmers-market-goers,  school volunteer groups, aspiring agrarians, and the simply agricurious, along with their friends, neighbors, siblings, parents, grandparents, and kids.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED: Find our more about Ithaca Crop Mob and join our Google Group at: http://groups.google.com/group/ithaca-crop-mob

One of their most recent service internships, in the Dunwa Rai fishermen’s community in Nepal, brought 6 young Israeli and American Jews to help 30 local men and women rectify a polluted river situation.  The ecology of the river that the community had fished in for generations was disrupted, and so together all the volunteers dug a pool.

The Tevel b’Tzedek volunteers included a former officer in the Israeli army, an artist from Tel Aviv, and a recent graduate of UC Berkeley in Anthropology.

The project also developed an agricultural education center, and is bringing irrigation, fish farming (aquaculture), a vegetable nursery, greenhouses, bio-gas toilets and more to “a population whose struggle to improve their agricultural yield will mean the difference between whether they will be able to stay on their ancient lands or be forced to migrate to inner city slums.”  The project, then, achieves social improvement through environmental sustainability.

Tevel b’Tzedek operates a full volunteer program in Nepal, which takes place twice a year and is four and a half months long.  The program includes living in a house in Kathmandu for the first month, and being immersed in Nepali language and culture courses, as well as study of globalization, development, environmental issues, and Judaism’s social and environmental justice tradition.  Time is also devoted for the volunteers to examine their role in the world today as Jews – both collectively and individually.

The second part of the program includes volunteer work, with opportunities to volunteer in the fields of: environmental and agricultural development, formal and informal education, women’s empowerment, public health, and community empowerment.

Read more about other volunteer programs::

Bustan Qaraaqa: Permaculture and Empowerment for Palestinians in the West Bank

GoEco Pioneers Volunteer Eco Tourism in Israel

WWOOF Your Way to Organic Food in the Middle East