Limud: Service Learning
Project TEN is the place for young activists interested in combining social giving and activity with personal learning and development
Going out every morning to work in the field meeting students, teachers, parents and agents of change in our host communities, brings the volunteers face to face with broad and challenging global realities.
Life in the local culture introduces the volunteers to the many differences between the culture in which they operate and the culture they are familiar with from home.
In addition to this, they face many educational challenges that require the use of professional tools. The volunteer centers are a warm and strong base to help them face the challenges that they, coming from completely different backgrounds, may face during there time on the program.
In order to make the project experience meaningful to volunteers and beneficiaries, we use these challenges they would face as a platform for meaningful learning.
Throughout the volunteering, service learning meetings are held that are led by the Center’s Directors and Coordinators in collaboration with local partners, and whose aims are to process the experiences in the field and in the group.
The meetings provide tools for correct coping and connecting the experience that volunteers encounter in volunteering and in the local community – with broader global issues.
Thus the volunteers are able to gain insights about the community in which they operate, but also about their original community and the country they are returning to. Alongside the professional aspect of volunteering, there is broad discussions about the identity of the volunteers themselves as Jews, as Israelis and as citizens of the world.
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The weekly sessions that volunteers undergo are a gift for those volunteers who strive to learn and acquire tools for meaningful social activities.
- Group time: Session to practice tools for communication and group work within the volunteer time.
- International development: Dealing with issues related to social justice in the developing world, with an emphasis on the country in which one volunteers.
- Education and Community: Acquiring tools for educational activities, sharing and processing challenges and successes from volunteering itself.
- Local Angle: Exposure to the uniqueness and power of local culture through familiarity with thought, literature and history as well as meeting young activists.
- Shabbat and holiday meetings: bridging the Jewish sources and values and the experience of life in the project.
- The centers in Israel have a Hebrew Ulpan and basic Arabic lessons.
- And more and more and more…
