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 almost two months in Israel. LIFE participants will then engage in an internships and learning in India for almost 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

In relation to participants in LIFE, the goals of the program are to offer them opportunities to:

1. Live with, help and learn from people in the developing world and in Israel through two different internships

2. Develop their capacities to understand and lead social change

3. Grow Jewishly and develop their relationship with Israel through learning, field trips, and connecting with top social activists, intellectuals and leaders

4. Create long-term friendships with like-minded Israelis.

The long-term goal of LIFE is to involve thousands of young adults in a new paradigm of Jewish life that:

1. Makes responsibility for and practical engagement with local and global social change core elements of Jewish and Israeli identity and life,

2. Helps revitalize Jewish Peoplehood through connecting Diaspora Jews and Israelis around a shared moral vision and mission

3. Empowers participants to help create the Jewish future through acts of vision-driven social leadership.

Who is LIFE for?

LIFE is for graduates of college, university or equivalent studies; Jewish participants from all around the Jewish world, and Israelis. The age-range is 21-28 with some flexibility. People will 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 think that all these reasons are fine and believe that the unique combination of these elements make LIFE a peerless opportunity.

LIFE will be demanding, not only in the structure of its experiences but in the demands made of group members to do, learn and grow. For example, two weeks after returning to Israel, participants will put on a major event for the Israeli public, funders and the media. Participants will be invited to the homes of Israeli LIFE funders and be expected to be able to represent the program. Upon returning to their how countries, they will partner with LIFE staff and top advisors to create the LIFE Alumni Association. LIFE seeks candidates who understand that the unique nine months that is the LIFE program is just the start of an ongoing effort to grow their own ongoing learning and impact and that of the program.

We seek people who will not only survive but thrive personally, inter-personally, culturally, intellectually and practically in what is a demanding program. 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 exceptional individuals who become participants in LIFE will be poised to play a major role, as they go back to their communities, in bringing the international Development and Jewish Social Justice Agendas to the next level and changing the Jewish community’s agenda, way of seeing itself and way of living. That is the leadership role LIFE seeks to inspire.

Dates and Timeline

Dates of travel to and from India are subject to change

• LIFE starts*: Sunday, 9^th November, 2008

• Travel to India: Sunday, December 7^th 2008

• Return to Israel: Sunday, March 15^th, 2009

• Program ends: Monday, June 29^th, 2009 (or shorter track on April 7th - ask us for details)

The Three Periods in Detail

1. Training and preparation in Israel

Note: This period has now been shortened to four weeks

This initial six 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, participants will get acclimatized to Israel (for those from overseas), begin getting to know each other and be 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. We will meet communities, institutions and individuals specializing in social change, public policy, international development and NGO-Government relations.

We will also pay attention also to the inner self and undergo both some solo time in the desert and start some unique Israeli training in mind-body connection to develop greater personal and group resilience.

The last few weeks of this period will be based in Jerusalem and focus on preparation for the 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. You will also meet Israeli NGOs to start the matching process for the second internship.

2. Overseas

We have an exceptional Indian NGO partner. For us, the goals are a safe and successful placement in which you are able to add value to the local community and a rich learning experience. These are primary conditions for LIFE to succeed. 

The period in India will begin with in-country travel to Hyderabad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabad,_India), a major city in Southern India. We will spend a week of in-country orientation. During that time the group will be together in that city. 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, group members will transition into their internship positions. These will span more policy and program-development based positions in the headquarters of organizations to more program delivery oriented positions in small villages. However, most positions will include at least elements of each and in order to allow a rich and diverse experience, participants may not live in the same location for the whole time there.

Internships will be for the full work week with occasional breaks for group seminars and Shabbat programs. Ample opportunities will exist for short trips to become acquainted with other places.

The last week will be an intensive seminar and meetings with key figures in the social services, social change and government in the region in which participants have been living and working.

A LIFE staff person will accompany the group and be in India for the whole period. S/he will travel to visit people on-site.

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

Note: As there is now the possibility of a shorter track (not MASA supported), we have concentrated the learning into the three week period after returning from India (March 15 to April 7th). Those doing internships afterwards will do so full-time. Ask us for more details as necessary.

This period begins with a two-week re-entry and orientation period. The mornings will be taken up with an intensive Ulpan (Hebrew study program) and the afternoons with (first week) unpacking the Indian period and planning for a community event for program partners and (second week) preparing for the Israeli internships and starting the ongoing learning program.

From that point, the structure of LIFE is:

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

2. One and a half days of learning, and

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

Additional ongoing Hebrew study will be included. On some evenings there will be lectures, meetings and participant-programmed activities. LIFE participants will be involved in the planning of these.

Some additional options will be offered:

1. People interested in ongoing Hebrew studies will be able to do so, at extra cost. Time will be made available, most likely by slightly reducing the scope of the internship.

2. People interested in doing extra training with The Israeli Training Center for Mind-Body Skills will be eligible to do so, at extra cost, and to gain certification to train people in this approach (connected to the Washington-based The Center for Mind-Body Medicine)

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 position 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. Development studies (overseas development, public policy and program

2. Leadership and civil society

3. Judaism and Israel/Zionism (both general studies and studies specifically related 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..

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.