Are your youth engagement numbers still recovering from COVID? Are you looking for some new tools to spice up your youth engagement work? Would you like to meet colleagues and partners doing similar work?
If so, join us for our six-week Organizing Intensive for Youth Professionals and Teen Educators!
Cohort II
Thursday February 2nd-March 9th
4:30pm-5:30pm ET
This practice-oriented six-week intensive will train you in Community Organizing and Design Thinking skills. These valuable tools will strengthen your ability to build Jewish community and meaningfully engage Jewish youth. While grounded in theory, our focus will be practice. By the end of our six weeks together, you will be prepared to utilize these relational community building strategies with the youth you serve.
This class is offered at no cost to Reform Jewish youth professionals and teen educators.
Youth professionals come in all shapes and sizes in our Reform Jewish world. This program is appropriate for anyone with the “hands-on” responsibility for working with teens (6th-12th grade) in their congregation. This includes those who work with teens in informal contexts like advising youth groups, and those working in more formal contexts: teaching conformation, running madrichim programs, etc. We welcome those in full-time professionals, as well as part-time professionals, and volunteers.
The Youth Professionals and Teen Educators Organizing Intensive will meet 4:30pm-5:30pm ET every Thursday February 2nd - March 9th.
Interested in participating but cannot make this time? Please email Rabbi Isaama at IGoldstein-Stoll@urj.org and we will do our best to accommodate your scheduling needs with our next cohort.
What are Community Organizing and Design Thinking? Why should I care?
Community Organizing and Design Thinking are two models for building community and mobilizing collective power to address shared challenges. Community organizing and design thinking skills will enhance your work on multiple levels. Within your congregation or organization, these skills will help you engage youth, empower your teens as leaders, and build relationships that are intentionally positioned to get teens in the doors. Beyond the walls of your community these skills will help you understand and support the transformations taking place within the Reform Youth Movement. NFTY is in a period of growth and transition that is being guided by these models. We aim to put teens at the helm of their own movement and rebuild community through these new relational lenses; this class will equip you with language and tools to understand and partner in this work.
The Youth Professionals Organizers Intensive will be run by Rabbi Isaama Goldstein Stoll, URJ Director of Youth Organizing – Synagogues and Local Communities.
