Motivator at Teen Convention

The Friendship Circle Volunteer Club will be holding its fifth annual Friendship Circle Volunteer Convention this coming March 4-6, 2011 at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Close to 100 teen leaders representing their chapters will be participating.

The Volunteer Club is a natural outgrowth of the Friendship Circle, the world’s largest and fastest-growing Jewish teen volunteer organization. Founded in 1994 in Detroit, Michigan with a handful of high-schoolers, the Friendship Circle today boasts branches in 79 cities throughout the U.S. and world and involves thousands of Jewish teens reaching out to Jewish kids with special needs.

Friendship Circle founders Rabbi and Mrs. Levi and Bassie Shemtov quickly learned that positive reinforcement was the best way to keep teen volunteers motivated. The Friendship Circle soon created its ongoing point system, one that rewards teens for their regular visits to the homes of special needs with a wide range of exciting trips, prizes and activities.

Friendship Circle International, the central office of Friendship Circles worldwide under the leadership of Rabbi Bentzion Groner, organized the first Friendship Circle Volunteer Convention in 2006. The annual Convention brings together mostly-secular Jewish teen Friendship Circle leaders, many of whom got their first taste of Torah-true Yiddishkeit through local Friendship Circle volunteer activities, for a Shabbaton of inspiration, fun and a carefully crafted message.

The theme of the upcoming convention, “Rewrite the Script,” will focus on “rewriting” the “scripts” that mainstream individuals tend to harbor regarding individuals with special needs.

“We want them to show people that special-needs people are human beings and have value to society,” says Rabbi Groner of the conventions plans for its teens. “They know that, but others don’t.”

Towards that end, teen attendees will be engaging in a scavenger hunt of sorts in Manhattan on the convention’s first day, “collecting” the opinions of passersby on special-needs individuals and speaking to them regarding any misconception they may hold.

In addition, the young attendees will take in workshops on advocating for kids with special needs in their communities, understanding the Jewish perspective on people with special needs, and how to involve special friends in a variety of new at-home games and activities. They will also engage in an organized debate on the question, “How is it best to advocate for people with special needs?”

Special sessions with globe-trotting rabbi Avraham Berkowitz and teen motivator James Elbaor, Director of Special Projects for the über-popular teen site DoSomething.org, as well as a late-night Motzoei Shabbos cruise with mind reader Ted James, will round out the Convention.

For an organization that rewrote the script on getting teens involved in meaningful activities, the upcoming Volunteer Convention’s theme is appropriate indeed, and on several levels.

“These are the top volunteers from around the country, and these are the future leaders of the Jewish community,” says Groner. “These are the people that are changing the world.”