A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the chair of the syanagogoue I attended when I was younger. She asked me to set up a youth council with a bunch of really enthusiastic young people who have just completed their Kabbalat Torah (a kind of confirmation – a furtherance of the Bar Mitzvah).
Now, these young people are able and committed, but not neccessarily committed to the idea of sitting in meetings, but really who is? My Dad’s still an active member of the synagogue, by which I mean he goes to a lot of meetings, sits on various committees, but does he find them interesting, of course not. They’re boring and cumbersome, but they do allow him to see many of the friends he has at synagogue and he gets to contribute to the way the community runs.
So, when the Chair asked me to set up a youth council, I checked with her that this was what the young people themselves said they wanted.
‘Well, they didn’t say that exactly, but they did say they wanted to give something back and keep in contact,’ was the reply.
‘And when you say you want them to be a ‘council’, do you want them to represent the views of the other young people?’ I went on.
‘I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought of that.’
So I thought to myself, ‘really, what would work here for everyone?’
I decided that of course I didn’t have the answer, that would come from meeting the young people and asking them. So we arranged to meet one evening to discuss what interest they really had in this whole process.
We ate and chatted and discovered that they already did a lot for the synagogue, most of them volunteered as teaching assistants in the Cheder (Sunday School), one of them helped run the youth club and they’d all run a service together recently. What they really didn’t want was to feel like they were being dragged back to synagogue to eat up even more of their free time.
They were very keen though to have an excuse to get together and enjoy each other’s company and were happy to do that at the synagogue. They suggested getting together on a week night to cook for each other, eat and watch films on the synagogue’s big screen. They’re happy to organise something like this and thought that after the first one they’d invite the Chair and new Rabbi to attend for a bit to chat informally about what they wanted from (and wanted to put in to) the community.
They were happy too if the adults from the synagogue council wanted to ask them the odd question, that they might discuss over dinner and send back a response.
We discussed what would put them off coming and they resolved not to use those methods (including standing up in assembly to announce ‘an exciting new …’) to promote this event. They’re communicating with their peers in the ways that they like to communicate. I’m just on hand to offer support if they want it.
Is this exactly what the Chair expected? No, but I think in the end she’ll get a more committed, engaged group of young members, because they’re creating this experience for themselves, rather than having a structure imposed on them by adults.
Is this what the young people expected? Also not, I think they thought they’d go away with another person chasing them about coming to volunteer at another thing at the synagogue. What they got was an opportunity to keep up with their friends, and create something at the synagogue which they have ownership of, rather than just another thing they participate in.
When we’re setting up councils in schools, synagogues, churches, towns or wherever, what we want them to do is engage people in the way those communities run. So we need to set them up in a way that reflects that. Don’t make the method for engagement un-engaging, that makes sense, right?