STUDENTS CHANGE THE WORLD

The Denver BMH-BJ Congregation has for many years been active in supporting ESRA’s Netanya sewing center and this year their innovative leaders, together with the local high school, included us in their Tikkun Olam program to collect funds for a sewing machine for one of our centers.  Through the emails that went back and forth to the final receipt of the funds, I found these high school teenagers so involved in the project and can only congratulate the founders of this program for their great way of educating and involving the youth in an outreach program across the oceans.   I asked the young man leading this group to explain how it all happens, and here is his letter.

Thank you to all involved in Denver – you’re doing a great job!

Nina Zuck 

“Change the world. It just takes cents”                                                                                         

Simon Kaufman – 2^nd Generation             

Sara Kornfeld / Elaine Lichterman, co-founders

As a 2nd generation member of a youth led social activism movement “Change the world. It just takes cents”™ my friends and I, students at Denver Jewish Day School, Colorado,  adopted  ESRA’s Netanya Sewing Center as our 2010 Tikkun Olam project.

“Change the world. It just takes cents” is an in-class opportunity to learn about and participate in service learning, philanthropy and social action incorporating Jewish history and values. This hands-on experiential learning program, initiated in 2006, is a movement of youth who advocate for social justice and have embarked on a journey of raising awareness about the Darfur genocide. The program provides students, Jewish and non-Jewish, with academic knowledge, the tools and a process enabling us to effectively participate in Tikkun Olam – repairing the world.

In the classroom we form groups and identify a problem that we can strive to “repair”.  We learned that many Ethiopian immigrants to Israel are unskilled and on doing further research discovered ESRA.  Through Elaine Lichterman, we connected with Nina Zuck, co-chair of ESRA, learned about the organization and how it creates a safe productive environment for immigrants, while teaching them a trade and immersing them into their new culture. 

As a group we elected to raise funds to help purchase a much-needed sewing machine for the Netanya Sewing Center.  I undertook to spearhead this initiative encouraging my team to solicit friends and family to help us in our worthy endeavor.  Together we raised $750, enough to buy the much needed new machine.  We are very proud of how we are able to assist in the rehabilitation of immigrants to Israel and hope that our work will change the lives of many.