By Benita Matofska

Our planetary resources may be finite, but we have an unlimited capacity to share, if we can unleash our sharing potential, there’s no end to what we can achieve.

As a speaker and leading expert on social innovation and the sharing economy, this has been my mantra for over a decade.

I’m the Founder of non-profit, The People Who Share, a volunteer-run organisation that campaigns to protect the planet and alleviate poverty through the sharing of vital resources such as food, shelter and water. I’m also a proud member of the Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue Council with responsibility for our Eco Synagogue work and now part of the LJ National Eco Group.

Our first national campaign and call to action is for Global Sharing Week (21-27 June), an initiative I started with The People Who Share in 2015. Global Sharing Week is the largest annual mass engagement campaign to promote and enable the sharing of vital resources with those who need them most, whilst protecting the planet at the same time. Previously, we have inspired events around the globe, from food shares to clothing drives and silent disco beach cleans. In 2019, 540 events took place in 211 cities across 49 countries on every continent. We reached over 100 million people worldwide.

Benita Matofska

In 2020, due to Covid, we revamped our efforts and started to build a map of impactful projects, that people could access to find, share and exchange resources. This year, we’ve launched our Map of Hope and we are asking people to share positive initiatives from around the world that are creating positive change for people and the planet.

We know that globally, we have enough surplus food, shelter and water to end poverty, hunger and homelessness. The idea of the Map of Hope is to demonstrate that where we have poverty, we can have prosperity, where we have loneliness, we can have community and where we have landfill we can have reuse.

To celebrate Global Sharing Week – Liberal Judaism style, Saturday June 25^th and 26^th will see the second Share for Shabbat. Our call to action is to ask communities what can you share? How can you share available resources and support others? Covid has brought increased isolation for many, whilst at the same time, we’ve seen the emergence of community What’s App groups, online buddying schemes, care packages and shopping for vulnerable people.

As the LJ National Eco Group, we call on all LJ communities to Share for Shabbat, to add a project to the Map of Hope, to share food that would needlessly go to landfill with those who need it most, via organisations such as FareShare and the Trussell Trust. Perhaps you could devote a service or sermon to the theme of sharing resources? Is there a local organisation that you could donate supplies to?

On 22 June as part of Global Sharing Week, I’m hosting a free online event Generation Share: Celebrating Women Changemakers. I’ll be joined by some extraordinary women creating positive change for people and planet from around the world, including Noa Toder from Tel Aviv with the SafeUp community project ensuring women’s safety together.

There are £3.5 trillion worth of idle resources in the world, by understanding that waste is simply resource in the wrong place and that sharing is a solution, we can help protect the planet, reduce isolation and alleviate poverty at the same time. Let’s unleash our unlimited sharing potential and this Global Sharing Week, deliver on our mission of Tikkun Olam.

• Benita Matofska is an international speaker, changemaker, social innovation consultant and author of Generation Share, the world’s first collection of changemaker stories from around the world who are transforming lives and the planet. Each copy sold helps educate a slum-based girl in Mumbai, is made from 100% waste materials and plants a tree. Cited as the top isolation read for a positive future by Forbes, you can purchase your life-changing copy here.