Michal Artsi
Impressions from the Morasha Award for Excellence in Social Responsibility Conference – "Rise up for Action"
Educators, students and parents from the schools all over Israel in which Morasha-Kol Israel Haverim operates, some 200 individuals in all, attended the Rise up for Action conference held in Tel Aviv earlier this month. The conference summed up the Morasha program’s year of extensive activity, focusing on social action and contribution to the community, calling youth to rise up, show responsibility, take the initiative, and lead.
The conference focused on an important and central question in education and society: How to develop social responsibility among students? The diverse conference activities offered a variety of possible avenues of thought and action in response to this question, including raising awareness and developing sensitivity through joint study and encounters with inspiring social activists, as well as by providing affirmation for social action undertaken in other schools while learning from their experience.
The conference opened with a panel of young adults who had led social initiatives on a systemic level while they were still students in school. The remarkable journey undertaken by these social leaders and the manner in which their awareness of social responsibility developed were fascinating to hear.
The central conference event was a hevruta peer study session of ancient and contemporary Jewish textual sources dealing with awareness of the other and of the needy, followed by a report by students on the exciting initiatives led by their schools, winners of the Morasha – Kol Israel Haverim Award for Social Excellence.
The conference closed with the moving Morasha – Kol Israel Haverim Social Excellence Award ceremony. 34 boys and girls went up on stage to receive the Award for Excellence, granted for the outstanding social initiatives they led in their respective schools.
Tzippy Eden, head of the Morasha in-house staff training department, explains: “The conference served to highlight the contributing role of schools as involved and influential communities. We also wanted to empower and strengthen youth leadership that contributes to its surroundings as an outcome of the study and understanding of Jewish texts on social responsibility, in keeping with “Greater is study that leads to action”. We are convinced that the students who went up on stage to receive the Excellence Award, as well as their friends who sat in the audience, were empowered by the experience.”
Yarin Danino, a student at the Yeruham Me'Uhad School: It is very exciting for me to be here today and to receive the Morasha Award for Social Excellence in the name of my entire school for the project we did with our Student Council. We enjoyed our work on the Leading Hevruta Study project and also felt that we were doing something special. I have a good feeling now too. I'm sure that next year we'll have the Student Council do something important and meaningful for the community because, as far as I'm concerned, it is a way of life".
