CAMP YAD b'YAD

Hand In Hand, Together We’ll Make a Difference
Ages: entering grades 9–12
June 16–27, 2008
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How much could you accomplish if you did just one thing each day to make the world a nicer, better, healthier place?  Whether you’re using paint brushes and power tools or pots and pans, you can help your community through Camp Yad.

• Be a part of tikkun olam (repairing the world) by working with other teens to do something every day to help those who are truly in need.
• Renovate homes, paint community centers and homeless shelters.
• Prepare food for the hungry and communicate directly with shelter residents.
• Plant gardens and clean up rivers or parks.
• Work with at-risk children or children in hospitals.
• Document your experience with photos and personal journals.
• Earn 60 hours of community service credit.
   

Camp YAD b'YAD allows teens entering grades 9-12 the chance to experience direct service opportunities in the areas of hunger action, shelter repair, environmental work, friendship and advocacy.

This program challenges high school students to ask the question: What does it mean to give? Volunteers seek answers to this question through service projects that engage the volunteer's mind, body, and spirit. They will serve low-income communities and neighborhoods, in the areas with the greatest needs. Projects range from cooking and serving food for the homeless to repairing community centers and shelters to visiting with residents of a homeless shelter to planting and gardening projects. All participants will get a face-to-face look at poverty and inequality, and will work alongside organizations and individuals battling them on the front lines. Trained Camp Service Staff will lead students through service-learning discussions to examine the roots of inequality and brainstorm solutions to the problems that create it.

We seek to help volunteers discover not only the importance of service, but ways to make it effective and lasting. Our community service camp incorporates Jewish values such as Tikkun Olam (Repair the World), Tzedakah (Charity) and equal rights for all through post project reflections. By relating projects to commandments in the Talmud, participants will serve the broader Washington DC community while learning about their own customs and traditions. The act of service – the coming together of caring individuals working for the greater good – is enlivening. Our focus is as much on the community we create together as the community we're reaching out to.

A completed two week session with Camp Service yields over 60 hours of direct service volunteering – satisfying most schools' graduation requirements. All project days will begin at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center on 16th and Q Streets in Northwest DC.

Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for Community Service provides a wide range of volunteer opportunities that address critical needs in our community.  Every week, every month, every year, our volunteers assist others to become independent, collect and distribute necessities to those in need, provide companionship and physically repair the community.

For more information about the 2008 program please contact Sarah Rabin (202)-518-9400 ext. 3270.