Program Boosts Shul Attendance

CKids, the Shabbos children’s program that has as much as quadrupled shul attendance at participating Chabad Houses, opened shluchim registration this week for 5774. (See video at end of article for the secret to its success.)

CKids, a joint project of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch’s Suite 302 and Tzivos Hashem, has been exciting shluchim, shluchos, and their communities for the past year and a half with a curriculum that requires no more than opening up the package.

Membership includes a ready-to-teach curriculum for every parsha and yom tov, as well as marketing materials for shluchim to use in their communities.

“CKids is built on the philosophy of b’chol derochecho do’eihu,” explains Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and the driving force behind CKids. “Children experience the great excitement of Yiddishkeit through varying media and develop a strong sense of Jewish pride.”

Echoing this with personal experience is Mrs. Rivkie Block, shlucha to Plano, Texas. “CKids has our children pulling their parents back for more,” she says. “We used to have eight kids come to shul on Shabbos…. Now we have thirty!”

And she’s not the only one seeing success. Due to the phenomenal response of more than 12,000 children at 250 Chabad Houses last year, CKids is now developing a weekday club curriculum, along with an online incentive system and club gear to unite CKids with thousands of other Jewish children around the world.

Rabbi Yerachmiel Benjaminson of Tzivos Hashem notes CKids’s effect on a more serious note. “CKids is on the cutting edge of combatting the rising rates of assimilation,” he comments, “allowing the children to develop a personal relationship with Judaism from such a young age.”

Registration for 5774 has already begun, with packages for both new and returning members, as well as new shluchim, Hebrew school directors, and more. Visit www.chabadchildren.com for more information.