Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative

The Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative—a network of national and local funders who develop, fund, support and grow Jewish teen initiatives in ten communities—unveiled a new website that shares key lessons, specific program models, and research about Jewish teen education and engagement. Teenfundercollaborative.com is accessible to anyone and is designed to help advance a robust conversation about engaging teens in meaningful Jewish experiences that add value to their lives.

The website is a vehicle to share relevant and helpful information with anyone who cares about Jewish teen education and engagement. We want to offer tangible resources to help communities think strategically and creatively about their approach to teen Jewish experiences. By sharing our lessons learned through the last four years in the Collaborative, we hope to help others.
– Sara Allen, Director of the Funder Collaborative

 

New Resources

In addition to information about each community initiative within the Collaborative, extensive research on teens, and reflections from practitioners on the ground, the website shares two new items: the Year 2 Cross-community Evaluation that looks at outcomes across four of the community initiatives, and Preparing to Deepen Action: A Funder Collaborative Finds Its Way—the second installment in a series of case studies documenting the collaborative (the first released in 2015) and the result of 15 months of observations and interviews.

The communities in the Funder Collaborative are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco. Teen initiatives that have been launched by Funder Collaborative communities include a range of Jewish experiences—from volunteer service to professional internships to surfing and more. Nearly all communities attribute early programmatic successes to their participation in the collaborative and its steadfast commitment to knowledge-sharing.  The evolution of the collaborative itself is central to creating an environment that fosters risk-taking, experimentation and ongoing reflection.

The Jim Joseph Foundation has invested more than $29,298,784 in teen initiatives and evaluations within the framework of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative.