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AMEN "Youth Command" Turns a Vandal into a Model Citizen
Yefrem an 18-year-old Russian immigrant, found his transition to the town of Modi’in, Israel to be a trying experience. With no friends in the city, loneliness drew him to the streets and the company of delinquent youth. "I drank a little, got into fights a little, and clashed with the police a little," admits the teen. Required through a school project to volunteer for a few months, he tried tutoring younger children but found it "boring". Then a cousin suggested volunteering in AMEN’s "Youth Command," a JDC project, in partnership with Israel’s Civil Guard, through which youth patrol the streets in effort to prevent vandalism. Among other activities, the Youth Command talk to their peers who a great-risk or already engaging in vandalism; give presentations in schools; educate their neighbors on drug and alcohol abuse; and organize and participate in activities to clean up neighborhoods.
Yefrem was entranced from the start: the uniforms, self-defense training, sense of responsibility and contribution to the community captivated him. Rather seamlessly he made new friends and acquired what he describes as a "second home in Modi’in". Yefrem now volunteers at the Youth Command almost every day after school, even though the mandatory school project has long since ended. The transformation undergone by Yefrem has been mirrored by the more than 10,000 participants in AMEN (a Hebrew acronym for "Youth Volunteer City"), a partnership established in 2003 between JDC, the Ministry of Education and the Israel Association of Community Centers to strengthen Israel’s voluntary sector. While the culture of voluntarism has been entrenched in Israeli society for many years — one third of Israeli adults engage in volunteer activities — today less than 1 in every 10 Israeli teenagers volunteer. Research demonstrates that most adult volunteers began this activity when they were young, tapping into the country’s youth is a chance to improve the future. In particular, through programs such as AMEN, JDC is striving to strengthen the youth voluntary sector by imbuing a sense of social responsibility, increasing the number of volunteers and expanding the opportunities available to them. AMEN is currently operating in thirteen local municipalities: the original eight pilot cities of Dimona, Holon, Ir Ha'Carmel, Kfar Saba, Modi’in, Nazareth, Netanya, and Ramat HaSharon; and Ashkelon, Beersheva Sh'ar Ha'Negev, Dalyat-el Carmel, Tiberias, and Usafia. In each of these cities, AMEN engages the mayor’s support for the initiative and establishes a roundtable of organizations who work with young people. This roundtable identifies local unmet priority needs, maps existing and potential youth volunteer activities and develops a strategy for increasing youth voluntarism. Volunteers are then recruited to implement projects that infuse them with pride in their civic involvement and provide them with a sense of personal achievement and increased self-esteem, while improving the quality of life in their communities. In addition to the Youth Command (or Youth Civil Guard), other AMEN volunteer frameworks include Medical Clowns, where teens dress up as clowns and entertain hospitalized children; Street Theater, whereby youth-at-risk are trained as street performers and entertain in local community centers and nursing homes; and Tour Guides, where youth are trained to conduct local tours for groups which cannot afford to hire a professional guide. At an event in celebration of Israel’s volunteer month in June, a group of young volunteers from Dimona presented their "Preventing Violence" project, the goal of which is to prevent violence between Israelis of different ethnic groups. Thirty Caucasus-Israeli (Kavkazi) teenagers wrote a play on racism and violence and performed it for groups of soldiers and schoolchildren. Each AMEN city held its own volunteer month activities, including recognition ceremonies for outstanding youth volunteers and "Opportunity Fairs" — festive happenings to recruit new youth volunteers for the upcoming school year. In the original eight pilot cities, the average rate of youth voluntarism has more than tripled, from 8% to 28%. Over the next five years, AMEN will seek to involve 50% of youth in 40 Israeli cities in volunteer activity, engaging a total of 100,000 teenagers. September 2005 |
