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 one month 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:
-
Live with, help and learn from people in the
developing world and in Israel through two different internships
-
Develop your capacities to understand and lead
social change
-
Grow
Jewishly and develop your relationship with Israel through learning,
field trips, and connecting with top social activists, intellectuals
and leaders
-
Create
long-term friendships with like-minded overseas peers and Israelis and develop a strong sense of purposeful Jewish peoplehood
The
long-term goal of LIFE is to involve thousands of young adults in a
new paradigm of Jewish life that:
-
Makes
responsibility for and practical engagement with local and global
social change core elements of Jewish and Israeli identity and life
-
Helps revitalize
Jewish Peoplehood through connecting Israelis and Jews form other communities around
a shared moral vision and mission
- Empowers
participants to do Tikkun Olam (repair the world), 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 21-30. 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
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.
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
LIFE is suitable for people seeking a life of vision-driven leadership, whether as a professional in
a Jewish or not-for-profit settings, lay leader, activist,
academic,
journalist, politician, corporate responsibility leader, social
entrepreneur, artist, policy expert and more. In our view, leaders come
with a variety of temperaments, personalities, strengths,
commitments, interets, skills and - yes - weaknesses. We believe in
diversity and have no cookie-cutter approach to who we seek for
LIFE.
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
Tuesday,13 October, 2009 to Tuesday, 13 July, 2010
Travel
to India will be four weeks after the start date and the group will
return after four months. Partipants will be updated about exact travel
dates closer to the time.
The
Three Periods in Detail
1.
Training and preparation in Israel
This
initial four 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. 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 section 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 in the Byrraju Foundation 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 have 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. 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 and some positions in the District
offices of Byrraju. Housing will be in apartements or domritories.
Internships
will be Monday to Friday; though Shabbat is a regular work day there,
Byrraju understands that as Jewish people we wish not to work on
Shabbat. The group will be empowered to develop and lead its own
Shabbat practice. There will be 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.
LIFE staff will accompany the group and be in India for the
whole period.
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 and planning for a community event for program partners and
the second week 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
The basic structure of a week of LIFE during htis period in Israel is:
-
Three days a week of internship (Sunday-Tuesday)
-
One and a half days of learning, including Hebrew/Ulpan studies for the first month or two (depending on level which determines intensity)
-
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.
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:
-
Development studies
(overseas development, public policy and program)
-
Leadership and
civil society
-
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.
|