Fourteen Young Emissaries from Afula-Gilboa departed from Israel on August 24, 2004, to fly to the United States to serve for ten months in seven SNEC communities: Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, New London, Providence, Westport, and Worcester.

These Young Adults have completed their high school education and are taking a year before their army service to give of themselves through volunteering in our Partnership Jewish Communities.

This is a landmark year for our P2K Young Emissary (YE) program. Five years after it was initiated by visionary people in Afula-Gilboa and SNEC with two young emissaries serving in one community, it has grown to a group of 14 Young Emissaries serving in seven communities. The Afula-Gilboa preparation program, which the Young Emissaries participate in from February through June, has also grown and developed.

In addition to our local P2K preparation course the YE participated in a two-week seminar during July and August which is very intense and focuses on Jewish Identity and Jewish Peoplehood. The seminar also gave time for the Youths to practice preparing and presenting short programs of the type which will be used in their volunteer service within the Jewish Day Schools and supplementary Jewish Schools.

This year is special because the Jewish Agency, having seen the overwhelming success of our Young Emissary program, has adopted it and it has now become an official Jewish Agency program and part of a larger Young Emissary program which the Education Department of the Jewish Agency has developed. This year over 200 Young Emissaries will be serving in the US from Israel. Most of them have completed their army service.

Our P2K region is still unique in terms of the numbers that we work with. Other programs have one or two emissaries. No one has 14 as we do. The impact of this program on both sides of our Partnership is enormous. People-to-people connections made have continued as Young Emissaries and their family members visit host families in SNEC communities even after their son or daughter has completed their year of service. And members of the SNEC Jewish Communities who have connected with the Young Emissaries in their communities come to Afula-Gilboa to meet their YE and their families when they visit Israel.

Our Afula-Gilboa/SNEC Partnership 2000 Program can take pride in having given birth to and nurtured one of the most successful P2K programs today. We can feel a special satisfaction in the unique structure of our program and the continuing talented and wonderful Young People who participate in this program.

Einav Roshu, one of our young emissaries who served in the second year of SNEC/Afula-Gilboa program (2000) in Springfield, Massachusetts served as a young emissary in South Africa for two months. Einav has completed her army service. Our young emissary alumni and their parents prove to be the central nervous system of our P2K people-to-people connections on a continuing basis. Many young emissaries and their parents continue to be in contact and to visit back and forth between each other and these connections prove to be long lasting and to stand independently of the matchmaking role of our office.

This reality, perhaps more than any other shows the success of this program and of the partnership living bridge concept in general. We wish continued growth and development of this natural core group of lay leaders to continue to keep the extended family of Afula-Gilboa and the Jewish Communities of SNEC alive and well over the coming years. The Young Emissaries when they have returned to Afula-Gilboa have gone into the Israel Defense Forces to do their army service. The girls serve two years and the boys three. So only recently have the alumni from the first years of the program come back to civilian lives in Israel. We have hopes that one of the future developments in our region will include a viable alumni group of young emissaries and their parents as a core group of lay volunteers in the region.

  Shvat 5765 - January 2005