Stories & Voices
Teens Summer Program Teaches About Community
August 15th, 2016
UJA Federation of New York >> <p>Every summer, teenagers come together from across the US to make a difference through JAM.</p>

Every summer, teenagers come together from across the US to make a difference through JAM.

We all remember our summers spent as teens. It was a time to learn about ourselves and who we wanted to be when we grew up. Every year, three precious months were spent reflecting, thinking about the future and having fun.

UJA knows this well. That’s why we’re proud to once again sponsor an innovative program called JAM – Judaism, Action, Mitzvot – which offers high school students the opportunity to travel, meet new friends, empower local communities, and explore their Jewish identity. Hosted by the American Jewish Society for Service (AJSS), JAM has already provided dozens of teens with a volunteer experience they’ll remember their whole lives.

On this exciting two week program, JAM participants meet with local leaders, learn about grassroots community issues and engage with people who are affected by these issues and organizations working to fix them. Not only do these students help solve problems relating to local hunger, poverty, disaster relief and access to education– they learn about the roots of these problems and how to target them at both micro and macro levels.

In the summer of 2015, JAM took a group of students to Memphis, Tennessee. They worked in urban gardens, food banks, and learned about community organizing. This past summer, building on the success of the previous year, AJSS led programs in Colorado Springs and Detroit, working with grassroots organizations to learn about the philosophy, roots and implementation of social service. More than this, the teens explored what it means to put their Jewish values into action, contextualizing their community service through a distinctly Jewish lens. As Jews, it is our responsibility to help heal the world; JAM shows its participants what it truly means to give back.

“Take the local food bank for example,” says Rena Convissor, executive director of AJSS. “When we’re talking with the people running the organization, they’re not telling our group how to stack jars. They’re explaining, ‘This is why we’re stacking jars, here are the factors that contribute to hunger, and this is what you can do to continue engaging with these issues.’”

“Max came back a different kid,” says one parent. “He’s more focused on what he wants to do with his life. He still doesn’t know what that is, which is fine at age 15, but he knows that he wants to make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to society.”

These experiences, and many more, are supported by the New York Teen Initiative – jointly funded through UJA-Federation of New York and the Jim Joseph Foundation, with the Jewish Education Project serving as lead operator.

To learn more about JAM, visit AJSS’s website or click here. To learn more about the exciting new summer programs for Jewish teens, check out www.findyoursummer.org.

 

UJA Federation of New York >>