Friday 24 October 2014

Cohort 7's Second Workshop: Leadership -- by Miriam Abadi


                During our second Diller Teen meeting, we saw our fellow friends after the long period of the Jewish holidays. To our surprise, Cohort 6 was there to begin the meeting with us! Once we all sat down, the two cohorts got to know each other by playing a few exciting and creative games such as “the wind blows”. In this game everyone is seated on chairs arranged in a circle. One person stands in the middle and mentions something about them self .Whoever has that fact in common must get up and find a new seat. Then there will be one person left standing and that person mentions something about them self and so on. We also played another ice breaker game involving telling the group one thing about yourself. These games were great ways for everyone to feel more open and comfortable with each other!




              Once Cohort 6 left, we played “the headband game” where every teen had to hold a piece of paper up to their forehead which had a famous person’s name on it. Each player had to ask questions in order to find out who the person on their forehead was. At the end of the game, we figured out together that all these people have something in common-they are all great leaders of their time!
      

  Next, we partnered up with someone and everyone performed a speech to the group without knowing which charismatic leader lectured it. Once we figured out who these speeches were said by, we then spoke about what makes a good leader. We concluded that we must take into account that an inspiring and thought-provoking leader should be eloquent, giving a speech in a way that he connects to his audience. For example, putting a quote into his speech, adding something that you can relate to on a personal level, or even just the way he catches your attention with his slow and captivating voice!




             After a delicious snack break, we watched two videos. One was about one man free styling dancing alone, publicly. After a minute, someone joined him in the crazy dance! Right after this person joined, more and more people felt comfortable to dance as well. After watching this video, diverse opinions within the group were expressed, whether the leader should be overly glorified or does the first follower share the spotlight with him. Most of us agreed that each have different roles. The leader is obviously glorified but the first follower still gets glory for starting the leader’s movement! After all, what’s a leader without any followers?  The second video was the TED talk. It was about a man who changed a student’s life, by unintentionally, making her feel relaxed to enter university. Four years later, he was told this by her and he couldn’t recall this moment, whereas the student was thankful every moment of her successful life for his remarkable act! From this video, we each shared a moving moment in our life with the group where we gave this enduring effect on someone.
               Towards the end of the meeting, we played one last game. It consisted of all of us being limited from our vision or speech and the goal of the game was to get a certain message across the group. For all of us it seemed to be frustrating and stressful! This game signifies the crucial concept of communication. Communication is sometimes hard and overwhelming because your followers may be limited, and, for example, might not understand your perspective on something. Our job is to overcome that, make an effort, communicate, and get through to the people we inspire!

               To end with, I think we all really gained a lot from our second Diller Teen Workshop. Now, we truly understand the qualities and effects of a leader and how anyone can become a leader and reflect their inspiration onto others! I am very excited to see what we can all learn next time we see each other!


                                                                                                          By: Miriam Abadi

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Cohort 6- Self-Management Overnight!! By Noah Adessky

Montreal’s Diller Teen Fellows Cohort 6 successfully planned a full 19 hours by ourselves!! All of the details, from accommodations, transportation and food, down to outings, volunteering and programming, were planned by the Fellows. This self-management overnight truly showcased how we have all grown as leaders since our very first days in Diller.



We all gathered at the Quality Inn Hotel Midtown on Saturday night. After we were assigned to our rooms, we met in the hotel’s conference room to play some fun icebreakers. One of these icebreakers helped show how close we have become, which was a constant theme throughout the overnight.



After loosening up with some icebreakers, we continued into a meaningful discussion on Tikkun Olam, because after all that was one of the major parts of our overnight. The group responsible for this activity set out a series of quotes from biblical, non-biblical and non-Jewish sources that in some way or another connected to Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. Each fellow went through the quotes and picked a quote that they most connected to. They then went on to explain the connection and how it related to Tikkun Olam and volunteerism. After a nice discussion, we were separated into our Impact Project groups and were asked to formulate a six-word sentence on what we hoped to accomplish with our projects. It was a great opportunity for everyone to truly reflect on their projects and then to share their ideas with the whole group.



The next part of our overnight was the fun part! We travelled to iSaute in Laval for a night full of jumping and bouncing on their trampolines! Through the tumbles, the flips and the cheese pits, we all had an amazing time!




We then had a very meaningful Maagal Laila to end off our night. The maagal reinforced one thing, the unity of our cohort. Through our discussions, we all came to the conclusion that we are one, united, Diller family.The rest of the night was ours, to hang out together.

We woke up the next morning to take on some hands-on Tikkun Olam volunteering work at Mada. After a quick talk from some of the workers at Mada, we learnt the importance of this organization in the community and were eager to give back and help. We were split up into different groups and performed different tasks including: unloading and sorting shipments of products, packing orders for families and making calls to different families to notify them that their orders were ready. I can safely say for myself, as well as some of the other fellows, it felt good to give back to such an amazing organization!



After travelling back to the Y, we continued working on our Impact Projects. We were lucky enough to have Stu Guttman, director of Chai Lifeline and a true leader in the Montreal Jewish community, come to speak to us about making an impact in the community and some of the keys to success in our endeavours. After hearing Stu’s story about in his journey in the community, we split into our groups to work on our impact projects and focus down our ideas into feasible projects. A huge thanks to Stu for taking time out of his Sunday to speak to us!

Lastly, but certainly not least, we had the opportunity to get to meet Cohort 7, the new Diller Teen Fellows, and participate in a number of icebreakers with them, run by our own Cohort 6 fellows. It was very nice to meet them and I wish them an amazing Diller journey!



As the person responsible for the overall planning of this overnight, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped out! You all did an amazing job and I am so thankful for all of your hard work in making this overnight a success! We have all learnt valuable skills that will be used to plan our self-management community week in Israel in December!


By: Noah Adessky

Wednesday 15 October 2014

Cohort 7 – Our First Meeting! by Theo Cape

Last Sunday, our cohort had our first official meeting! After getting to know each other two Sundays prior, we all convened to discuss our individual and group goals during the Diller program.


First, we played “name bingo,” where we were each partnered up and got to talk to one of our new friends about the history of our name, i.e. where it comes from, were we named after anyone, what it means, etc. We also watched a video about people’s names and how they can reflect our personalities.



Afterwards, we all got back into a circle and decided on our group values. Although it took a while for us to come to a consensus, we finally decided upon these values: unity, diversity, perseverance, discovery and respect.



Then, we were given time to think of our own personal goals for Diller. Each of us received a piece of white fabric, and on it we wrote our goal and decorated it. The list ranged from independence to family, but one thing was clear: they all centred around community.


Finally, we put together our flag! The centre logo was designed with different patterns, and we all taped our pieces of fabric to the big blue flag! We can’t wait for the next workshop, and we hope it’s as good as the last!


by Theo Cape

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Cohort 6 Talks About Making an Impact

Last Sunday, Montreal's Diller cohort 6 started to work on our Impact projects, which is a big part of what we do relating to the “Tikun Olam” (fixing the world) pillar of Diller. We started by organizing our interests visually in "mad libs" and then as a group began discussing the issues that we felt were important to us, and how we wanted to help. We examined what we thought the difficulties in achieving these goals could be and looked at how we can overcome them.

When we each had a general idea of what we wanted to do in place, we did a quick round of “Speed-Dating”, so that we could figure out whose ideas matched up the best with our own. Now we are left with the task of, within groups of 3-8, planning these Impact Projects out and making them a reality.

On the subject of the Impact Projects, Sarah told us about a charity project happening on an international scale so that we could analyze the pros and cons of certain charitable techniques. We looked at TOMS, a company that gives a free pair of shoes to those in need in third world countries for every single pair of shoes bought in stores. At first glance, this seems brilliant, but a major flaw we noticed is that they are not attacking the root of the problem. Ultimately, they cannot give everyone shoes, so this act only helps the lucky few who get shoes. We saw that the best approach is to attack the actual problem. Instead of giving some people shoes, make it safer to go barefoot such that everyone can benefit from the intervention.
Afterwards, we started planning our self-management overnight. While it is still in its early stages, our Tikun Olam themed night is taking shape to be a lot of fun. While there is still a lot of work to do, I am looking forward to the results, and to enjoying something that we put together ourselves, entirely from scratch. 
With only 3 months to Israel, all these big projects are really exciting and I am looking forward to seeing how they come out!

By Jon Boretsky