Check our website & Facebook for new opportunities around the North Shore.
How Service Brings Balance to a Busy Life by Hannah Wolf 
By morning I am a Marblehead High School (MHS) senior scampering from class to class on the college track. When the afternoon rolls around, I am field hockey co-captain Wolf. By night I am my mother’s daughter and brother’s sister as we sit down to dinner. But during the weekends and summer days, I become a helping hand, a new friend. One of my many roles is as someone who is always involved in some type of community service. I’ve participated in a wide variety of services, such as working at blood drives, role-playing at a children’s haunted house, cleaning up a park, and tutoring high school students. While very different activities, these were all ways for me to give back to my community. One type of service, though, stands out for me. If you asked me to pick one type of service that gives me the most satisfaction, I would tell you about my volunteer work in retirement homes.
Even the work I do with senior citizens is not easily defined by one job, as not every retirement home offers the same services. For a while I volunteered weekly at a local senior center playing bingo, doing crafts, and just simply visiting with the residents. I even took my interest in working with seniors to Mexico, when I participated in a service trip there and visited multiple retirement homes. Currently, I am able to combine my volunteer work with another passion, playing guitar and singing for seniors from time to time.
The most valuable part of this com- munity service is the connection that I am able to make to the people. Working with an older generation makes me stop and think about things like simplicity and history. My senior friends love giving accounts of marriages, grandkids, and professions, and I love hearing them. For me, these stories are a way to leave the complicated and busy modern world behind for a few moments and visualize their long list of life experiences. During the week, I am a speaker and a leader, but volunteering in retirement homes often gives me the chance to play the role of the listener. So I sit back and enjoy.
 Recently I spent a couple of consecutive weekends at the Brookhouse Home in Salem, an all-female retirement home. Other NSTI (North Shore Teen Initiative) members and I devoted two to three hours on a couple of Sundays to spending time with the women who reside there. This service wasn’t a chore like cleaning up a park or washing cars, but instead it involved painting flowerpots and eating ice cream. I guess you could ask how is that community service? To me, the time I spent at the Brookhouse Home wasn’t necessarily about making a large-scale difference. It was satisfaction enough to know that those few hours had meant so much to the women there.
The late principal of MHS, John Ziergebel, used to call the students “complex polyhedrons.” He was trying to convey how the students at my school are complicated and diverse in their everyday activities. As you can tell, I fit that description, yet the activity that I enjoy the most brings balance to my life. Working at the Brookhouse Home and with seniors in general brings a much- needed break from that label and allows me many moments of pure enjoyment spent with my senior friends.
|
ONGOING PROGRAMS
"SOUP-ER" Sunday - Heroes Needed
November 15, 11:30 am - 2:30 pm in the JCC kitchen
JFNS, International Mitzvah Day & North Shore Teen Initiative are joining forces to fight hunger.
While the adult community is upstairs making calls for JFNS’s Super Sunday, we welcome teens to drop in and help us with this hands-on project.
Mitzvah “souper-heroes” are needed to make soup and lasagna for local homeless shelters. Sign up in advance is helpful but not required.
 Lobbying / RAC
This February 19 - 22, North Shore Teen Initiative will take a group of teens to the "L'Taken Social Justice Seminar" in Washington, DC. The trip focuses on how Jewish values inform our stances on social justice. Every year more than 100 congregations from across the country bring their high school students to participate in this exciting event.
This unique Washington opportunity enables students to focus on current issues before the House and Senate, prepare to lobby on Capitol Hill, tour the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, participate in Havdalah services at one of the memorials and sample the vibrancy of Georgetown and other exciting areas. Registration materials are available online.
> Read More
 CAMPERSHIP INCENTIVE APPLICATIONS FOR FIRST-TIME CAMPERS FOR SUMMER 2010 AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER
North Shore youth who have never before attended overnight Jewish summer camp are invited to apply for incentive grants to help defray the cost. Thanks to a partnership between the North Shore Teen Initiative (NSTI) and the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC), grants of $1,800 per youth for the summer of 2010 will be awarded to the first 50 qualified local campers who apply beginning November 1.
> Read more
The Boston Jewish Film Festival '09 is
screening the movie; Letters to Jenny on
November 18th in Danvers. If you are a
Jewish teen living on the North Shore,
NSTI would like to invite you to be our guest.
We will cover the cost of admission as well
as movie snacks. If you are interested, please
rsvp via facebook or email info@nsteeninitiative.org
View movie trailer here.
More Ways to Connect With NSTI
Visit our website to find:
- A on-line community calendar of teen activities.
- A complete listing of volunteer opportunities in the community sign up
- To receive more information directly www.nsteeninitiative.org/signup.html
Find our page on Facebook (search North Shore Teen Initiative)
Email: info@nsteeninitiative.org
Please call or email to request a brochure (as pictured above).
Send snail mail inquiries to: 4 Community Road, Marblehead, MA 01945
|
