They’re multiplying.
The San Francisco teenagers chosen for a prestigious fellowship will soon have peers in three other U.S. cities and four Israeli cities as the Diller Teen Fellowship goes international.
“Being a part of a national initiative is something the whole community is excited about,” said Leslie Pomerantz, director of the fellowship’s host agency in Baltimore, one of the Diller satellites.
The Diller Teen Fellowship started 10 years ago in San Francisco with funding from the Helen Diller Family Foundation and manpower from the Bureau of Jewish Education.
Each year, 20 bright teenagers are selected to participate in a yearlong leadership program, culminating in a trip to Israel. The fellowship aims to prepare Jewish teens for future leadership roles in the Jewish community.
The program has been so successful in the Bay Area, said program director Nicole Sasson-Miller, that a year ago it announced goals for expansion, asking several Jewish organizations around the nation to apply to host the program.
“The funders were so amazed with success of the program locally, realized they stumbled onto a great idea and wanted to replicate in other communities,” Sasson-Miller said. “But we targeted a very select list of communities we thought the program would thrive in.”
Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore were selected to each receive $95,000 from the Diller Family Foundation to start the fellowship locally. The grant pays for about half of the program’s total cost.
Participating Israeli communities include Upper and Central Galilee, which are matched with San Francisco and Detroit, respectively; Beit She’an (matched with Cleveland) and Ashkelon (paired with Baltimore).
The cities were chosen for the size and strength of the Jewish community, and the potential for the teen leaders to be embraced by the community.
“The Upper Galilee has partnered with San Francisco teens for about eight years, and we found it such an integral part of the program’s success that we wanted to replicate that as well,” Sasson-Miller said.
Israeli and American teens will visit each other during the yearlong fellowship.
The U.S. fellowship stands on four pillars: Israel, leadership, community service and Judaism. In Israel, the focus is slightly different, consisting of Jewish identity, pluralism, diaspora relations and community service.
“We want to cater this to the needs and resources of each community,” Sasson-Miller said.
For example, Cleveland will emphasize Jewish education, while Baltimore is focused on community service. Each Baltimore fellow is responsible for developing, implementing and recruiting for monthly hands-on service projects in the community.
Fellows around the country will be linked by an email listserv and occasional videoconferences. They will likely meet each other in Israel at the conclusion of their fellowships.
“We think they’ll feel strength and power that comes with knowing they’re not alone in this, that other teens are learning and caring about the same issues and are being groomed to be the next generation of Jewish American leadership,” Sasson-Miller said.
Past participants are excited for future Diller fellows to have a broad network of teenagers around the world. Raziel Ungar, 24, was a Diller fellow in 1999. He now serves on the fellowship’s advisory committee.
“It was such a valuable experience for me that if it can be replicated on a larger scale for students and communities, I think a lot of people could benefit,” he said.
Jewish communities will soon find out if he’s right.
The latest batch of San Francisco Diller fellows will be announced this month.