From the 2008 Fall issue of Inside Yad Sarah:
Two students from New Jersey, Danielle Winter of Highland Park and Shlomo Weprin of West Orange, spent July in Israel with the JLIC Global Service-Learning Fellowship.
The program chose 26 specially-selected students to spend four weeks in Israel, participating in a formal curriculum concerning the Jewish concepts of social responsibility, social justice, chesed and tikun olam, and applying them to individual projects.
For their service project, Danielle and Shlomo were matched with Yad Sarah. From the 2008 Fall issue of Inside Yad Sarah:
Click here for page 3 of the Inside Yad Sarah Issue
Two students from New Jersey, Danielle Winter of Highland Park and Shlomo Weprin of West Orange, spent July in Israel with the JLIC Global Service-Learning Fellowship.
The program chose 26 specially-selected students to spend four weeks in Israel, participating in a formal curriculum concerning the Jewish concepts of social responsibility, social justice, chesed and tikun olam, and applying them to individual projects.
For their service project, Danielle and Shlomo were matched with Yad Sarah.
The two interns brought a plentiful background of talents to Yad Sarah. With film experience under their belts, they used their afternoons at Yad Sarah to produce several videos, a project that highlights the organization's many essential programs. These videos will bring a visual element to the range of services that Yad Sarah offers.
The work reflects their enthusiasm for the organization. “There's so much going on here all the time. This building is huge,” Danielle said from Yad Sarah House in Jerusalem.
“What made the biggest impact on me,” Shlomo added, “was knowing all this is done as a service for people, for free. I just thought that was phenomenal.”
With the ideal external perspective “as foreigners and as documentarians,” Shlomo and Danielle were able to bring fresh eyes and a new sensibility to Yad Sarah, shining light on the organization from the perspective of people not accustomed to regularly witnessing the efforts of the volunteers and all the options available at Yad Sarah. One of the videos focuses on the visitor experience at the organization headquarters in Jerusalem, while another follows up on an Israeli child with cerebral palsy who received a specialized walker through Yad Sarah. All will be available for viewing on http://www.yadsarah.org.
Michelle Sarna, a JLIC educator at NYU and a director of the program, said Danielle and Shlomo “thrived at Yad Sarah. It was an opportunity for a real contribution.” Sarna sensed that the students recognized that rather than do a simple, one-time project, they were in the position to make, instead, “a mega impact, enabling others to pay tribute to what Yad Sarah does.”