Youth Engaged in Service
"A place where you call the shots." — B'nai B'rith Youth Organization
B'nai B'rith Youth Organization (BBYO) promises Jewish teens an "escape to a place where you call the shots." Boasting 18,000 members in 60 communities around the country, BBYO focuses on youth leadership. Each chapter has an adult volunteer advisor, but the high school-aged members elect their own officers, choose their own activities, and take responsibility for planning and carrying out service activities that can span the globe. The national organization provides program planning materials and trains chapter and regional officers at leadership camps.
While many young people are initially attracted to BBYO for social reasons, they discover many other rewards. "Young people join because their friends are here. Once they are in the organization, they find out about all the opportunities and then become leaders in their community," says Eric Adelman, a BBYO staff member for the Michigan region. BBYO helps members fulfill school requirements for community service and also bolsters students' résumés for college admission. In fact, BBYO prepares youth for postsecondary education through campus tours, networking with BBYO alumni, and online college preparation tools.
In Michigan, an active state with 22 BBYO chapters, members take part in varied local service initiatives. "Easier projects-where youth can drop in and volunteer at a readymade opportunity that's already in place—tend to happen more frequently," says Adelman. But, he adds that Michigan teens also travel to Chicago and the Baltimore/Washington, DC, area for intensive summer programs that inspire them to make a lifelong commitment to service.
Called Operation Shema (after the core Hebrew prayer in Deuteronomy), the program puts BBYO youth to work as cooks at a caf for the homeless, mentors to low-income campers, and gardeners transforming empty lots into community gardens. BBYO youth work with young people of all different faiths and can see how their actions empower them to become leaders in their own communities. One participant remarked that the program "has given me a new outlook on the work that I can do. It is the greatest feeling in the world to know you have helped a community become a better place."
