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October 15, 2004
Teen leaders need more help
Leadership maven Toby Rubin to speak at the Richmond CJA event.
KYLE BERGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Teen leadership professionals are usually part-time employees who
often receive bad supervision and skill development, are poorly
paid and are overworked and undervalued. And that, said Toby Rubin,
is a big reason that it is estimated that 80 per cent of Jewish
youth are not engaged in any teen programming.
"A teen program is only as good as the professional working
with the teens, so that's where the investment should be,"
said Rubin, who will be the featured speaker at Beth Tikvah Synagogue
this month for the Combined Jewish Appeal's (CJA) Richmond event.
Rubin has spent the past several years training youth professionals
with the goal of increasing the involvement rate of Jewish teens
in her community.
More importantly, Rubin has helped find the funding necessary to
support quality leadership and staff, because good professional
staff leads to good programming and more options for teens, she
said.
"We needed to get everyone really caring about teen programming
and valuing the work that needs to go into it," she said. "By
getting everyone together and getting everyone behind the effort,
we get more teens engaged, because we get more programs running.
"Teens have so many options and they are so darned busy that's
it's hard to get their attention," she continued. "Teens
don't get involved because there's a really neat brochure or because
their parents told them there's a wonderful program. They hear it
from other teenagers and the programming has to turn on the teens."
Rubin's experience goes back to the late 1990s when she chaired
the San Francisco Jewish Federation's teen initiative. She led efforts
to engage the community in determining what the needs were and where
the gaps in services were.
Eventually, under the auspices of the Bureau of Jewish Education
of San Francisco, the Ti-ke-a Fellowship was created. The fellowship
is an 18-month program that offers professional development in Judaism,
adolescent development, programming and practice, and organizational
life. In 2002, Rubin became the director of Ti-ke-a.
The Vancouver Jewish community is currently in the early stages
of a similar teen initiative and has seen some positive development
in teen programming throughout the community.
"The teenage years are the most important time to be supportive
of young people's identity-building experiences and it is also the
time that they are pushing away from [Jewish experiences] the most,"
she said of the need to involve teens. "It's a task that's
critically important but there isn't an easy answer for it."
But, she explained, when her community valued the teens, as well
as the professionals and institutions that work with teens, everything
slowly began to change.
"What we have developed here are positive Jewish experiences
that have the potential to engage teens in Jewish life."
Rubin was honored with the Wexner Heritage Foundation Fellowship
in 1996 and was the 1999 Volunteer of the Year for the Jewish Community
Federation of San Francisco. She has previously practiced law as
an independent practitioner representing students with disabilities.
Rubin's talk takes place Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m., at Beth Tikvah Synagogue.
For more information, call 604-257-5100.
Kyle Berger is a freelance journalist and graphic designer
living in Richmond.
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