You are here

Home

Israel through Community Service and Social Action

Emily Schreck's picture
by Emily Schreck on January 27, 2012

For my individual project, I have been working with an website called jchoice.org to raise money for Israeli organizations that I feel connected to. My trip to Israel (BBYO's Impact Israel) was strongly focused on community service and social action.

Over just the few weeks that we were in Israel, we met with a lot of different organizations including ones that help refugees in Tel Aviv and a camp run for underprivileged children.

After leaving Israel, the one thing that I decided I was going to do was bring these organizations home with me. I really felt obligated to help these people do what their passion is from my home in America. When I was presented with the MZ Teen Israel Internship, I was really excited because through the program, I knew I could bring this dream of helping these people into reality.

Once I began working on my project I knew that I wanted to:

  1. Raise money to help these organizations; and
  2. Raise awareness of these issues in Israel. 

When brainstorming what I was going to do, I remembered that last summer at a program called Impact Boston, I learned about a website called Jchoice.org that brings Israeli/Jewish organizations into the light and allows people to donate to whatever organization that they want to. The website allows people to read about organizations and make their own choice. Once I remembered about this website I decided I was going to look into putting the organizations that I met with onto the website and use social networking to raise awareness and money for the organizations that I feel so connected it.

I have contacted Jchoice and they are getting ready to add my organizations to the website. I have had a few issues contacting the organizations and my trip director so the organizations are not up yet but they will be soon so look out for that! Also, I have been working on the iConnect with Israel conference. Y'all should be sure to come and make sure you bring lots of friends! It's going to be really cool, meaningful, and you will be able to share your experiences in Israel with even more teens from all around the country.

Tags:

“This summer when I finally got the chance to go to Israel for the first time, I was beyond excited to see the place that I’ve been learning about. After some thought, I decided to choose a community service trip because I wanted to really experience Israel. Thanks to my trip, my connection is unique because I have a firsthand bond to the people of Israel.”

If you could do one thing for the rest of your life what would you do?
I would travel the world. I would LOVE to meet a million different kinds of people. I want to experience many cultures, hear many languages, try many different food and hear different people's stories. I think it would be really amazing to learn about all the different kinds of people in the world while helping them at the same time. I would dedicate myself to meeting these people, getting to know them and then granting them a wish. I would be very content with living my life out of a suitcase in a variety of conditions all around the world.

If you could be dropped off in one place in Israel, where would it be and why?
Tel Aviv. I know that this is probably a popular answer to this question. Of course, Tel Aviv has beautiful beaches, a fun night life, great shopping, big corporations and rich history but that is not why I would choose to go there. When I was in Israel, we spent a day learning about the refugees in Tel Aviv. Throughout the past couple of years, I have learned about refugees and horrible conditions in Africa, but I never really felt connected to the situation. This was until that day in Tel Aviv. For the majority of the day, we sat in a hot room in a community center listening to speakers. Yes, that does not sound like a very pleasant day, but the people who spoke really impacted me. All of the speakers had taken a vison they had a put it into reality, not only where they following their dreams but their dreams were to help other people. These individuals helped the refugees with education, creating a family, finding jobs and so much more. I learned about what these people where doing to help the refugees who were basically being ignored by Israel. After listening to the speakers, Oscar, a refugee, came and spoke to us. He was the real thing and honestly after hearing his story and listening to him talk about leaving his home country because he was being watched by the government for speaking his mind, it clicked that this is something I really want to help with. After arriving home, I applied to be a MZ teen to share my experiences that I had in Israel including this one with my community. I want to tell my community about all of the causes I learned about and how they can help these causes. Hopefully, my attempt to spread the word about all the issues in Israel will cause my community to act and really make an impact.

My Google Search Story: