WOW - Mitzvahs with USY Group 4

Every once in a while you have one of those days that reminds you why you do this work, and that teens are well worth our investment of time and effort.

This was a great group of USYers with an exemplary staff. After a delicious youth hostel breakfast (if you've never had one, you don't know what you're missing - not every food service can get the scrambled eggs the same temperature as the cold orange juice) and our opening we boarded the bus for Hod Hasharon to spend some time doing some craft projects with some of the elder participants as Click. This exemplar of social entrepreneurship runs 5 centers in town, runs a craft kit factory where the elders make and assemble the kits, and a gift shop where items made by the elders are sold. The workers are paid for their work, treated to home-baked treats, and find companionship in dignity in their work.

Linda Mosek, the Aussie born director is a bundle of energy, and had guests, including the wife of the mayor there to greet us. The USYers sang with the elders while working on their crafts (stuffed teddy bears and hand puppets) and their a capella group also performed for us. They were terrific.

After a delectible USY box lunch (tuna and cheese) we got back on the bus and headed for Kibbutz Nachshon, where we met with Asher Elias to runs Tech Careers, a non-profit that trains post-army ethiopian adults in computer programming, network design and software quality assurance. Their residential (hence the location on Kibbutz) programs run from 4-11 months and are very intense. Even in the current difficult job market, over 80 percent of their graduates are employed in the high-tech industry in Israel, and according to the manager, Naomi Zimmerman, the recent graduates of their COBOL class (and old business-related mainframe language popular in the 70's and 80's) are taking over Bank HaPoalim (one of Israel's leading banks). The issue was that the generation of COBOL programmers from the 70's was reaching retirement age, and there was no one to replace them, until Tech Careers stepped in and started training their students. Asher is an amazing example of Mitzvah Hero - modest, soft spoken, seeing an problem - the economic disadvantages of the Ethiopian community in Israel, and did something concrete to start solving the problem.

It was a great day - we had a great closing session in Jerusalem. Danny and I had dinner at Marvad HaK'samim, a homey, yemenite style restaurant. You'll have to ask what I had privately. I don't want to blog about it in case my doctor should check my blog.

Another full day tomorrow - a session with USY group 2 where we will hear from the charismatic Bradley Cohen of All for the Kids - an Israeli NGO that is building and supplying schools for kids in India followed by packing food packages at Leket Yisrael (formerly Table-to-Table in Ra'anana - more to follow....