Overview

LIFE is a nine-month service-learning program for Jewish College graduates from the Jewish world and their Israeli peers. LIFE begins with a training and learning period of three weeks in Israel. LIFE participants then engage in internships and learning in India for four months, afterwards returning to Israel for a second iternship and learning period of similar length. Internship positions will advance a social justice agenda through change-making programs in diverse fields. Through training, top-level learning and reflecting on their own work, participants will develop their social vision and their leadership abilities. Living with, learning from and working to advance the interest of people in weak and vulnerable situations in a developing country and in Israel, offers an unparalleled opportunity to experience and explore the ever-deepening connections between local and global social justice.

Goals

The goals of LIFE are to offer you the opportunity to:

1. Live with, help and learn from people in the developing world and in Israel through two different internships
2. Develop your capacities to understand and lead social change
3. Grow Jewishly and develop your relationship with Israel through learning, field trips, and connecting with top social activists, intellectuals and leaders
4. Create long-term friendships with like-minded overseas peers and Israelis and develop a strong sense of purposeful Jewish peoplehood

Who is LIFE for?

LIFE is for graduates of college, university or equivalent studies; Jewish participants from around the Jewish world with their Israeli peers. The age-range is 21-30. People join LIFE for diverse reasons: for career development, for Jewish and personal growth, for the global social justice dimension, for the intense experience with Jews from other parts of the Jewish world. We like all these reasons and believe that it is the unique combination of these elements that makes LIFE a peerless opportunity.

LIFE is demanding, not only in the structure of its experiences but in the demands made of you to do, learn and grow. We will help you thrive personally, inter-personally, culturally, intellectually and practically in this environment. Successful candidates will have the following qualities:

• Strong commitment to program goals
• Good inter-personal skills, resilience and hard-working
• A love of learning
• Diverse experience in their own lives: in Jewish communal life \ social action \ inter-cultural experience\ etc
• A critical mind and a constructive attitude

The Three Periods of LIFE in Detail

1. Training and preparation in Israel

This initial three week period is an intense time of personal and group process, learning and training. It is the only extended time during which participants will not have work responsibilities.

In the initial week, overseas participants will get acclimatized to Israel and everyone will begin getting to know each other and become oriented to the program in all its facets. 

The next few weeks will include significant time out of town participating in seminars and trips – including time both in the desert of the south and in Israel’s north looking at case-studies of community, rural and urban development and social change. You will meet communities, institutions and individuals specializing in social change, public policy, international development and NGO-Government relations.

You will also pay attention also to the inner self and starting to explore the connection between Tikkun Olam of the outer (public) and inner (personal) worlds.  

This period will be based in Jerusalem and focus on preparation for the stay and first internship in India. We will cover everything from the history and practice of international development, how to get the most out of your internship, cross-cultural communication, Jewish learning, language learning for India and video-link-ups with the staff we will work with in India. 

2. In India

• Microfinance
• Minority (caste) rights
• Children’s rights
• Mainstreaming back into school children who have been in child-labor
• Women’s empowerment circles
• Health services for the rural poor
• Capacity building for Indian NGO’s
• Venture capital for social entrepreneurs, and more

The period in India will begin with a five-day stop in Mumbai to visit the ancient and still-vibrant Jewish community, to become acquainted with the diplomatic and business aspects of the Israel-India relationahip and to visit organizations, such as an NGO working in one of Mumbai's famous slum areas.

Your first overnight train trip will then be to Hyderabad, a major city in Southern India and your new home for four months. You will spend several days in further orientation. We will cover practical issues like safety, food, health and program issues like introduction to the local NGO’s, staff roles, policy context of the internship positions.

Subsequently, you will transition into your internship position. These will span policy, research, capacity building and program-development based positions in the headquarters of organizations. Internships will be Monday to Thursday. Friday is a learning day of field trips and meetings. Though Shabbat is a regular work day in India, LIFE participants do not as a rule work on that day (with the rare exception for a key meeting if the particular intern does not mind). The group will be empowered to develop and lead its own, pluralistic Shabbat practice. You will have your own travel schedule to out of town, remote areas. Met by local staff of your NGO when oyu arrive, or perhaps traveling with a senior manager, you will make site observations, meet regional and local staff, conduct research. Ample opportunities exist for short trips to become acquainted with other places. Sunday is a day off in India - but for LIFE, some Sundays will be off and others catch-up days for the lost work time on the Shabbat/Saturday.

There is a week of holiday inthe middle ofthe time in India and another two weeks to travel at the end. The last week in Hyderabad will be an intensive seminar bringing closure to the time there and meeting with key figures in the social services, social change and government in the region and country.

Policies related to personal safety, cultural issues, local legal requirements will be covered in the training and preparation period.

LIFE requires participants to confirm to all laws in the country of the internship and will not be able to assist participants who break the law, including but not only in relation to use of illegal drugs. Law breaking is considered self-destructive and damages the program’s standing in the eyes of local partners and potential future participants. Irrespective of whether lawbreaking by a participant leads them to be is caught or charged by local authorities, it is sufficient reason to be removed from the program.

3. Israel

This period begins with a re-entry and orientation period. The first week will focus on 'unpacking' the Indian period, preparing for the Israeli internships and starting the ongoing learning program. Ulpan will start during this time, depending on your level two or three times a week for 4-5 weeks. Living is shared ina a furnished Jerusalem apartment. Participants shop and cook for themselves.

The basic structure of a week of LIFE during this period in Israel is:

1. Three days a week of internship (Sunday-Tuesday)

2. One and a half days of learning, including Hebrew/Ulpan studies for the first month or two (depending on level which determines intensity)

3. Half a day of group and independent project work.

On some evenings there will be lectures, meetings and participant-programmed activities. LIFE participants will be involved in the planning of these. People interested in continuing their Hebrew studies will be able to do so at extra cost, subject to availability. Time will be made available, most likely, by slightly reducing the scope of the internship.

Jordan Trip

We are thrilled to announce that already for the current LIFE group we will be piloting a 3-4 day trip to Amman to meet Jordanian social activists, explore civil society dynamics in yet another setting, this time with Israel's neighbour. The trip will be additionally special as you will meet LIFE Alumni who will be invited to join the trip and Israeli professionals form our parnter NGO's, for whom the trip will be a unique in-service training and learning event. More learning and networking opportunities.

Internships

We do our best to match needs and desires with the positions. The work done will be based on real needs of local populations; it will be real work of real value to the local organizations and the populations they serve. We will not fabricate work or ‘load’ certain kind of jobs to create an illusory satisfaction. The relatively short period of the internships and the existence of language barriers necessarily limit what can be done. When we join new communities to help, we need to do so with modesty and an ability to rein in pre-conceived notions of what might be required of us. Participants will be required to show flexibility, seriousness, initiative and work constructively with local organizations and LIFE staff to craft their internships. In some cases these may involve a ‘portfolio’ of responsibilities, some of which are more straight forward and others allowing for more creativity and independence. Within this context and with these limitations, we are looking to maximize the gaining of professional experience, skills and knowledge. High-level supervision and mentoring can be expected by the participants. For this reason we rarely refer to our work as ‘volunteering’ because that term does not capture the essence of what the positions are.

Learning

We embrace “service learning”, an approach developed and thoroughly tested in the States over more than a decade (see, for example, www.servicelearning.org). This is why LIFE couples the two rich intern and cultural experiences with learning, training and reflection. The goal is for the learning to enrich the work and the work to enrich the learning – such that each is more than it would be by itself.

The core themes we will cover in each of the three periods are:

1. Civil society, social justice and development studies
2. Leadership and social change
3. Judaism and Israel/Zionism (both in general and as they relate to the above topics)

LIFE’s learning style will embrace a wide spectrum of approaches: lectures, seminars, workshops, training, independent research, peer-teaching, meetings with key personalities, field trips, artistic expression, use of digital media, case-studies and more..

Health, Safety and Security 

Your health, safety and secuirty is a major concern for the LIFE staff as they plan and implement the program. This impacts living and travel arrangements, the kinds of organizations we partner with and the policies we put in place (such as not traveling alone in India). We will train you to be sensitive to potential dangers and develop your own sense of how to be safe. As necessary, we will change the program to ensure you are not put at risk. You will be expected to partner with us on these issues; to look after yourself and others in the group.

Afterwards...

Graduates of LIFE will be invited to take an active role in building LIFE through speaking, writing about and being part of the International LIFE Alumni network and to foster Jewish social activism in their own lives and those of others through participation in that network. 

Graduates who live in North America will additionally be invited - by an arrangement already in place with AJWS and AVODAH - to join the Alum Network established by those organizations. This will enable LIFE graduates to join another community of remarkable, like-minded people and to more easily continue to work for Social Justice in keeping with the experiences they have had and the commitments they have nurtured during LIFE.