Sydney Flynn is one of 20 young adults participating in Onward Israel LA, an 8-week Israel program for college students and young professionals that includes a resume-building internship as well as group experiences to deepen participants’ understanding and connection to Israel and its people. While exploring life in Tel Aviv with her peers, Sydney is currently interning at Amit LaDerech, an association that helps to integrate and empower young adults from Israel’s periphery, post-army service. Sydney is blogging throughout her 8-week experience.
The end of this week marks the half-way point of our time in Tel Aviv! After working my internship for a few weeks, I’d like to share some personal reflection on the experience.
I work for a nonprofit called Amit LaDerech, an association that helps integrate and empower young adults, post-army, from peripheral populations. This organization provides guidance through a mentorship program for recently released Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who come from Israel’s periphery. Because of their backgrounds, these individuals could have been exempt from service but chose to enlist and serve. In the army, they are provided with a strong support network but many struggle with the transition back to civilian life. Amit LaDerech works to keep these soldiers from falling back through the cracks.
The organization has a very small professional team, which, in turn, has given me the opportunity to work directly with the CEO and one other intern (a participant in the Onward Israel Cleveland program). The work I’m assigned is interesting – it includes translating all the Hebrew material to English to appeal to American donors, or creating an English Facebook page to engage with a non-Hebrew-speaking audience. I do not know Hebrew, so Google translate has been my best friend. Though the translation is not always accurate, I am able to work with my fellow intern and boss to figure out the best way to convey the same message in English.
Primarily what I have learned is that it is not the tasks themselves that are the most important components of my experience, but it is the people I am surrounded by. My boss, Natalie (a PresenTense Fellow), is the most committed, enthusiastic, and understanding supervisor I have ever worked with, and the other intern contributes immensely to the positive atmosphere in the office. We collaborate as a team, and I really feel that Natalie trusts our decisions and takes our input seriously. Natalie is truly devoted to ensuring that this internship is as beneficial as possible to us. For example, Natalie initially invited us to her own meetings and, even though it was exciting to be part of these meetings, they were conducted all in Hebrew. Because of the language barrier, I felt I was not benefiting as much as she hoped I would. As a supervisor, she was very proactive and responsive, and approached me after the first meeting to ask if I thought it was advantageous to my overall experience to sit through these Hebrew meetings. She was very understanding. She now returns from meetings and debriefs the key points with me. It is this kind of communication that makes my internship run smoothly.
Recently, I realized I had stayed at the office hours longer than planned. I have never experienced a time where I stayed at work purely because I was enjoying what I was working on and was motivated to continue. [Before the program began] I was a little hesitant coming into this work experience, but after the first couple of weeks and this recent realization, I cannot think of an organization, work environment, or coworkers I would rather be spending my time with in Israel.
Read our “Onward Israel LA: Meet Our 2016 Participants” blog for a full list of participants.
For more information on Onward Israel and other immersive experiences, please contact Margalit Rosenthal at (323) 761-8208 or MRosenthal@JewishLA.org.
