NORTH AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEMPLE YOUTH

Sophie Vener, 17 at a NFTY event.

North American Federation of Temple Youth

For Sophie Vener, 17, a desire to perform on stage turned into a desire to perform public service.

In ninth grade, Sophie chose to attend a performing arts high school in San Diego. She was amazed by the diversity of the student population and the stories and trials of her fellow classmates. “Being involved in such of an artistic community, I’ve learned a lot of important lessons that have applied to social justice,” she said.

Sophie found the perfect place to channel her energies in the North American Federation of Temple Youth, a youth-run organization founded on the Jewish value tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world,” she explained.

Could you tell us more about NFTY?

It’s a Reformed Jewish youth movement that is pluralistic, so some of its main values are learning about the religion and exploring Judaism for young people. It’s a safe place for spiritual exploration and self exploration in a Jewish community.

You’ve held numerous roles in NFTY since you became active in ninth grade. Describe a little of the work you’ve been done.

NFTY is broken up into 19 regions, and my senior year in high school, which was last year, I was the social action vice president of the Southern California region. And what that entailed is writing programming, which is like a two-hour block of basically informal education about topics that Reformed Jews are passionate about. For example, I’m writing a program about four different African regions and issues that happen there.

A lot of the approach to this type of programming is simulations and discussions. And so the discussion that came from me was malaria. But the programming always has different components: an action piece, which would be a hands-on form of social action, and then an advocacy piece.

One of our big focuses was the organization Nothing But Nets. We raised about $1,000 for Nothing But Nets, which is an organization that sends bed nets that prevent people from getting malaria in refugee camps in Africa.

Could you describe some of the other projects your region has undertaken?

Another program that had kind of very direct results was a social action carnival, and it had different stations. There was a station where you wrote letters to your senator about environmental issues. There was a station where we signed petitions about Darfur. There was a station where we made about a couple hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for homeless in LA, and there was a station where we made butterflies for the Holocaust memorial in Austin, Texas, that’s a memorial for children who died in the Holocaust.

What do you feel is NFTY’s biggest success?

I think one of the biggest successes of our movement is that we have thousands of young people who truly care about pursuing justice. We have kids all over North America who will stand up and say that they support gay marriage, that they want to end the genocide in Darfur. That’s like the biggest success that I can think of.

But on a more tangible level, during Hurricane Katrina, the North American social action vice president started this, but basically we raised over $20,000 through NFTY, which was on a completely grassroots level, to give to kids who were displaced from the hurricane.

Copyright 2009 Y-Press