By Lauren Alexander
For my Chavaya, or 4-day experience, I chose to participate in the Tikkun Olam program, which focused on “repairing the world” through community service. We completed a wide variety of projects during the trip, including volunteering at two community gardens, assembling hygiene kits for soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force, entertaining residents at an old age home, creating party kits for impoverished families to help them celebrate their childrens’ birthdays, and much more.
This experience was absolutely a meaningful one, both for myself and I hope also for the many people I was able to serve. I learned so many lessons from this trip, but perhaps the most important one was how easy it is to bring joy to another person’s day, and the monumental impact that joy can have upon that person. I saw this when interacting with elderly residents who hadn’t seen people other than the staff at their facility for over a year and a half. I saw this when I was assembling hygiene kits and was told by a current IDF soldier exactly how amazing it felt to be on the receiving end of the project. And I saw this in a community garden that was less than two years old, where our work was quite literally helping a woman’s dream come alive.
Another amazing opportunity that we had on this trip was to learn from a youth organization called Kids 4 Peace about their work to build relationships between Palestinian and Israeli teens in Jerusalem. There is no denying that the long and complicated history between Israel and Palestine along with conflict that continues into the present day contribute to high amounts of tension between the two groups But, Kids 4 Peace wants to change that for this next generation. They want to start breaking down cultural and linguistic barriers that exist between teens. They taught our group that encouraging people to recognize their similarities rather than their differences is the first step towards peace, and that even though peace may not be immediate, it is most certainly possible.
The Tikkun Olam Chavaya was absolutely a rewarding and fulfilling experience. We might not have spent our time trekking through forests or stepping into the grueling life of a newly recruited IDF soldier, but we were able to take part in something bigger than ourselves. Participating in this program allowed us to learn about the world around us, and then it gave us the opportunity to make it better.
