By Cindy Mindell

How does a Jewish community grow young leaders? Six years ago, Cyral Sheldon set out to put the question to the test.

Sheldon is program director of the Teen Leadership and Philanthropy Institute, a program of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford in collaboration with Yachad: Greater Hartford Jewish Community High School. It may be too early to track the philanthropic activity of the institute’s participants in their adult years, but Sheldon has seen student interest in the program grow every year since its inception.
This September, the institute will expand both internally and without. The curriculum will be extended from a year-and-a-half to four, and participation in the institute will be open to all Jewish high-school students in the community, whether or not they attend Yachad.
The institute originally offered a year-long curriculum, and expanded by one semester after participants requested a longer program.
The first year is an exploration of what Jewish tradition teaches about leadership, citizenship, and philanthropy, including presentations by a variety of community leaders and philanthropists on how and why they give to charitable causes. Students learn about how the greater Hartford Jewish community is organized, and begin to examine their own ideas about giving.
Students then visit several local community agencies, selected to represent the gamut of causes and populations funded by charitable giving. Students meet with administrators and recipients of services, and collect funding proposals from each agency. They then become a board of directors and an allocations committee, charged with deciding how and where to distribute the monies provided by a donor to the institute, and planning fund-raising activities. At an end-of-year ceremony, the students present checks to the recipient agencies.
During the following semester, students give their time and talent to the same beneficiary agencies, and some even serve on those organizations’ boards of directors.
“One participant told me that he wanted to do more at the end of year two, but I didn’t have more to offer him,” Sheldon says. “I was searching for a way to keep the energy going. If you have motivated kids, it’s terrible to have to say, ‘You’ve done it all,’ because nobody does it all.”
Through market research and brainstorming with Yachad parents, Sheldon learned that social action and philanthropy have high appeal with today’s Jewish teens. As a result, the institute will now be a four-year program. “We wanted to try to create a leadership institute for Jewish teens and try to roll in some of the other programs out there,” Sheldon says. Each year will have a different focus, starting with the nuts and bolts of philanthropy, then moving on to mitzvot in the community, social activism including lobbying in Washington, D.C., and putting learning into action through internships, volunteer opportunities, and community board positions.
Last year, at the closing ceremony of the Teen Leadership and Philanthropy Institute, students who had served as teen representatives on agency boards summed up their year-long experience. Their reactions may offer a hint as to the kind of Jewish adults the institute is helping to shape.
“Without thinking twice, I would participate in this project with the same agency again,” said Avon High School senior Nicole Berns, who sat on the board of the Jewish Association for Community Living. “This experience has inspired me to want to be active on boards in the future, and to be as involved as the other members of the board are.”
Joshua C. Rubin, a senior at Berlin High School, served on the board of Jewish Family Services of Greater Hartford. “This was a truly fantastic opportunity for me to see how the real world operates,” he said. I would definitely do it again if I had the chance. The experience has definitely made me be more likely to serve on a board when I am older because even though it involves a great time commitment, I know I would be making an amazing and important impact on the world.”
Hall High senior Lia Weintraub sat on the board of the Mandell JCC. “What I learned behind the scenes of businesses will help me in whatever career I wish to pursue, as well as for future boards that I will serve on,” she said. “I am lucky to have had this experience, and would recommend it to any student who is interested.”
For more information: www.yachad.net / (860) 236-5611

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