In my experience, ROI consistently achieves its goal to connect community innovators across the World.

Like Moishe House, it has a model that I hope other cultural, social and religious communities around the world learn from, empowering and enabling those who already have motivation.

Nothing can replace a face-to-face experience, as I discovered at my first ROI experience in 2009, and recalled again at the first ROI European Gathering in Vilnius, where Clive Lawton gave an incredible keynote speech that still sticks in my memory. ROI shows us that the centre of the community is wherever it's actively happening, wherever people are actually creating what they want, not just hoping someone will make it happen.

And I feel Hazon has a lot of that proactive attitude too. Here in the UK we have seen a gradual increase of activities that shake the faith out of its comfy four walls. Events and communities that use the agricultural foundation of the Jewish calendar, or Tikun Olam as inspiration for collaboration with green movements. Through Moishe House London, I regularly promote and work with our local Transition Town networks. We run a community allotment out of our back garden, and our Tu b'Shevat Seder gets bigger and better every year. To those of you involved in activities in America, this may seem old hat already, but the great thing with the UK is that although we maybe a little behind you sometimes, the small size of our community, means that ideas once taken spread like wildfire.
ROI's Micro Grant enabled me to collect a large amount of information in a short amount of time, which i could take home and spread through my own networks. From running CSA schemes to ethical Kashrut, as well as the chance to meet and learn from ROIers, such as the wonderful Wilderness Torah I went home from the conference feeling reconnected with my faraway family, a subculture of the UK Jewish community that I hope will rise up and become a focus of the mainstream, as it is clearly becoming in the US, through the hardwork of organisations like Hazon.

For more photos, visit Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hazonflickr/sets/72157627277720547/