Education

One central element of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps is its education component, its learning curriculum Corps Members get to experience throughout their year. According to their website:

You will gather weekly to learn with other Corps members, and attend weekend retreats throughout the year. During these sessions, you will meet with a wide variety of top-level activists, trainers and educators to learn more about the dynamics of urban poverty. You will also learn how to become an effective agent for social change, and the way that Jewish history, culture and religion connect to your work to combat poverty and strengthen community.

In our project proposal, Andrew and I stated the education element would comprise 15-20% of the programme's overall emphasis (I guess this could equivalent to how a typical participant shares out his or her time on the programme) and would include:

• Jewish learning and Torah;
• Skills training; and
• Leadership and personal development

Questions for us are:

• Who will design or manage the educational curriculum?
• Will it run evenings (as with AVODAH in the USA, who have say four educational evenings per month) or daytimes, say one day a week? If the latter, will we be able to ask for the same amount of investment from our placement organisations?
• Who will teach? There is no lack of educators and speakers from social action organisations (Jewish and otherwise) in the UK.
• How much peer education do we ask for and encourage? AVODAH USA Corps Members visit the work-place of one participant per month, where they also take part in an educational session written and delivered by that participant.
• Are we hoping for any significant improvement over the course of the year in the participants' Jewish literacy? Rabbi Ruskay, National Education Director, firmly states this is not the goal of AVODAH, that the program can simply show Corps Members how Judaism and social justice intersect, while there are other options if your primary goal is to become a more literate Jewish learner.
• What would we identify as the key skills for AVODAH UK participants to learn, as regards their social work, for use on the programme but also equipping them for a future life of social action? AVODAH USA have chosen to cover fund-raising (before the programme begins actually, so they can raise something to go towards their year), public speaking, philanthropy, and mapping the Jewish community ('Who is speaking in my name?').
• Can we outsource some of the education element? AVODAH USA are building a database of curricula and lesson plans. The organization is used to asking, what is the social action component of the next Jewish festival? I know Tzedek, for one, have a good deal of materials on social justice and the Jewish calendar.