Hipsters are fun, carefree and elegant… Their image attracts young men and women even long after it was trendy. The hipster-style party was organized by Maria Rosenblit, a visitor to the Hesed Besht Youth Club, as part of the empowerment of our young clients in preparation for active participation in community life.
The teenage club is gradually changing its face, as children have the ability to grow. Almost a year ago, when it was rebranded and a course was taken to educate madrichs for the community, all participants were announced the news: “In the future, you will become an active community of the community and you will organize and hold events yourself.” Then the kids laughed, but time passed and the steps taken yielded results. Most of the participants at that time reached not only the appropriate age when it is not scary to take on serious matters, but also gained intelligence, skills, talent and desire for this. The upbringing of youth was also facilitated by the teenage organization “AJT” and the methodological advice of its curator, Alla Magas. It was her visit to Khmelnytskyi in March 2015 that became the final stimulator of our youth to quit playing and start actively acting for their own development and the benefit of others. After all, providing our children with broad opportunities for self-realization is a promising task for the Foundation’s employees.
Maria Rosenblit has always been an activist and a restless member of the teen club. At the Thiya Community Center, she participates in an international project to meet Jewish teens from the United States (JCC on Long Island), leads a hip-hop group for peers, and attends a visual arts studio. In the winter, she visited the Skolmo teen camp organized by the Joint MOO, which only strengthened the girl’s resolve to take an active community position. Ultimately, all this resulted in the “Stilaga-party” – a party for friends from the teen club, which was supposed to please schoolchildren tired of constant lessons at the end of the school year.
Since the "Thia" Community Center works for the entire city community, club members could bring any friends they wanted with them. As long as everyone followed the dress code: sneakers, checkered shirts, ties for boys and headbands for girls. The event program included an unprecedented surprise that would not have happened without the participation of the children themselves. The eternal problem with organizing a disco, when someone is shy and someone does not want to (a headache for any organizer of children's parties), was overcome by using the latest technologies. A selection of videos from the Internet on the topic of "Just Dance", when people have to repeat the dance moves of the characters, got all the participants on the dance floor without exception. We even managed to hold a dance battle between different teams, not to mention group dances.
Having had plenty of fun and visiting a sweet buffet, the children took up the intellectual-associative game "Hat", which dragged on for a long time, but gave a lot of positive emotions. The party took place on the eve of the Lag Ba Omer holiday, so everyone present once again remembered the traditions of the holiday.
The event was attended by Kateryna Umanets, a freelance correspondent for the Khmelnytskyi City Council newspaper “Proskuriv” – the pride of the Khmelnytskyi Jewish community in the field of youth journalism. She talked with Maria and some of the event participants and will prepare an article for her publication about the methods of educating Jewish youth at the “Thia” Community Center.
Expanding the horizons of our young generation is a painstaking work of several Centers of the Foundation, but it is an extremely important process. The first "swallow" of last year's reforms has already flown into the world and now we expect the youth environment to become more active. After all, activists are waiting for participation in adult projects related to the All-Ukrainian Volunteer Network "Community" and many other useful things.
