Shalom Children Activity Program (SCAP) is a Collaborative Partnership between several South Shore based Jewish organizations that value the many ways people express a connection to Jewish culture and identity. For parents looking for some kind of Jewish connection, SCAP’s programs and events are a way to experience, create, and celebrate together while meeting other families living in your area. No-cost programs take place throughout the year from South Boston to the South Shore.
Rabbi Fred Benjamin of Congregation Beth Shalom of the Blue Hills contacted me in 2019 about launching this initiative using a grant from CJP (Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston). The budget was small so we needed to find a cost-effective way to launch the new program – ideally as a section of the congregation’s main website, https://bethshalombluehills.org. But in order to attract unaffiliated families and be true to the collaborative nature of this initiative, it was important to find a way to theme these pages in a completely unique and independent way.
We chose the Event Star theme, and took advantage of two plugins: Multiple Domain Mapping on Single Site and Multiple Themes to get the desired effect. The site uses Events Manager Pro for the event calendar and registration.
Should this project continue beyond the first year of programming, my preference will be to move the suite of pages attributed to Shalom Children Activity Program onto its own hosting environment (or possibly use WordPress Multisite). This will give us greater flexibility to scale the project and add new features such as wait-list management and user accounts should people wish to register for multiple events at a time or to cancel or otherwise manage their accounts.