| Background: Many students' primary connection to Judaism is through community service - tikkun olam, healing the world. This provides a perfect venue for engaging students and offering leadership opportunities to engagement students who want more leadership. |
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| Community Service/Tzedek |
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| Strategy: 1) Form a committee - Any project in this realm requires participation from multiple people. A committee ensures people know about it and feel invested in what you're doing. Just keep the commitment to the committee minimal to join and add responsibilities to students as they request it. Make it easy to participate, and have opportunities for greater involvement. Creating roles BY PROJECT as opposed to positions was most effective (i.e. Day Without Hate committee, Midnight Run chair, etc) 2) Blitz people with opportunities early in the year - early in the year is when people figure out what they're going to do differently for that year. If tzedek is a student's schedule at the beginning, you'll be more likely to see that person later. 3) Have diverse group of projects ready - This makes your committee more diverse and attracts more people. This is not only a diversity in causes you're helping, but also in scale and creativity of your community service projects. 4) Partner with other groups for community service (ISRU, BSU, JCSO) - Community service is the BEST way to start a relationship with other organizations that you might not have a good relationship with currently and can lead to other types of programming in the future. 6) Be flexible to students' wishes - This is always good advice. But you have extra flexibility in this field because you don't always need a ton of people to accomplish a lot. |
| Ongoing/Past Events: Midnight Run - Taking food and supplies to designated locations in New York City and distributing it to the homeless. Ba'atzmi - Chanukah party for menatlly disabled young adults Date Auction - Raised money for Magen David Adom and our ASB trip (internally partnered with the social committee) ASB (sep. page) - Alternative Spring Break trip. Random Acts of Kindness - Weekly tabling that provides an easy way for people to do community service on the fly. New, fun, creative things that take very little time. Human Development Project - A Joint Jewish/Muslim community service group that is an INCREDIBLE group to work with! Day without Hate - A wonderful tabling and partnering opportunity - get people to sign a pledge to make one day of the year a day without hatred at RU |
| Assessment: We've already seen lots of generated interest. This field has only begun to be tapped for engagement purposes, and will continue to grow. Keep being creative and adapting to students' needs. Also, it's a great opportunity to build bridges with other organizations. On a personal note, some of the opportunities that have afforded me the most growth and the most personal satisfaction has been from working with this target group |
| Key People: Elexis Silverman - Single-handedly ran JCSO and planned the ASB trip, plus came up with the date auction idea. A real go-getter. ALWAYS thinking tzedek. She'll be busy, but loves this stuff. Liz Foreman- Next year's Community Service director. She's organized her committee and is going to oversee all the subcommittees we form, plus worked with me to form the weekly tabling project Sharon Shaked - Is the person in charge of HDP for next year. She went on birthright and will be amazingly helfpul. Elizabeth Davis - Wants to create Jewish AIDS Network in New Jersey Scott Roland - A previous community service chair. Initiated Midnight Run, NYC Robbie Aufseeser - Helped start a website committed to tzedek. (http://www.povertyfighters.org/) Help him put Rutgers on the charts for next year! That's what drives him, and he's more than willing to help out on any project if told about it. |
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| So you know: I advised the student board's community service director last year, and we worked together to develop engagement-oriented community service opportunities. Below are lessons we learned, initiatives we created, and ideas for the future. |
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| Future Events: Midnight Run, New Brunswick - Create the NYC version of this within New Brunswick. Jewish AIDS network Programs with kids - They always draw a HUGE crowd Use the Community service websites for Rutgers and New Brunswick: CASE - Rutgers Department of Community Service Opportunities, NJServes - a matching service for volunteers and organizations, Jewish Family and Vocational Services, Volunteer Match |
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