BBYO offers teens many opportunities for growth

The pay may be nil but the payoff is immeasurable. For two evenings a month and the occasional weekend, Jewish adult volunteers participate in BBYO chapter activities as advisors, to help teen members create meaningful Jewish lives and lasting Jewish community.
The Connecticut Valley Region (CVR) BBYO, headquartered at the JCC of Greater New Haven and headed by Josh Cohen, comprises 15 chapters, a mix of coed, girls’, and boys’ groups. Each is run by a teen board and supervised by adult advisors, and engages in a range of programming designed to strengthen personal and communal Jewish identity, nurture leadership skills, and engage the greater community through tzedakah and tikkun olam projects. The teens themselves run chapter meetings and plan programming, but it is the advisors who make the crucial difference, says Cohen.
“One of the unique things about BBYO is that all of our advisors are volunteers,” he says. “They’re not paid to advise the chapters or give up their weekends to come to conventions. Our advisors are the backbone of our program and without them our chapters could not meet.”
The 85-year-old international, pluralistic Jewish youth movement boasts an intrepid start. In 1923, a group of Jewish boys in Omaha, Neb. organized a fraternity and named it Aleph Zadik Aleph, using the Hebrew letters as a protest against Greek societies, many of which excluded Jewish members. AZA was adopted in 1925 by B’nai B’rith as its official youth program. Two years later, the first permanent B’nai B’rith Girls (BBG) chapter was established, in San Francisco.
Today, there are more than 25,000 teen members worldwide and some 250,000 living alumni, many of whom remain involved in the organization.
In fact, several of the CVR chapter advisors are alumni, Cohen says, so shaped by their experience as teen members that they come back to contribute as adults.
And yet, while most of the CVR chapters have adult leadership, those in Greater New Haven, Ridgefield, and Greater Hartford are in need of advisors.
Fairfield resident Sheryl Grabiec joined the Adrienne Levine BBG in Bridgeport and came back as an advisor to a Trumbull chapter 25 years ago. When her own daughter got involved in the Levine chapter, Grabiec joined as its advisor. “I remain active today because I love this organization,” she says.
BBYO offers Jewish teens many opportunities for growth, Grabiec says. “They can learn leadership, communication, sisterhood, brotherhood, problem-solving, and how to make a difference in the community,” she says.
Advisors aren’t the only adults who are dedicated to keeping the organization alive. Cohen says that he hears regularly from parents, especially after every statewide convention.
“As a parent, I love BBYO,” says Stephen Gochros, whose daughter Renee is a member of the BBYO Willimantic Chapter. “Renee has always maintained a close relationship with the girls from her B’nai Mitzvah class. BBYO has enhanced that relationship and given the girls opportunities to do so much more to strengthen that bond and share it with other like-minded young adults. Her meetings are circled on the calendar weeks in advance. The conventions are anticipated with the same level of excitement one would expect before that first trip to Disneyland.”
Gochros says he is impressed by the education the kids receive from guest speakers at BBYO conventions, and by their dedication to community-service projects like the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life and preparing sandwiches for the local soup kitchen.
“These girls have become a group of caring, concerned, and giving young adults,” he says. “The organization helps my daughter grow and mature in a safe place, and reminds her of her Jewish identity. Even her Facebook status for religion is ‘Jewish!’ I would recommend BBYO to any parent as a MUST.”

To learn more about BBYO Connecticut Valley Region activities and volunteer opportunities email  CVR@bbyo.org or call (203) 389-2127.

Sabbaba BBG chapter president Sophie Needleman writes about her group’s community service work in the Ledger’s KOLOT, here.