Mizrachi mentoring scheme will train leaders for the future

MIZRACHI UK, the religious Zionist movement, is launching a scheme for sixthformers to mentor pupils in Jewish primary schools.

Called Yehudi, it is due to begin next month with around 500 children in a dozen Jewish primaries and 100 leaders from secondary schools taking part.

Rabbi Andrew Shaw, chief executive of Mizrachi UK, said, “I’m a big believer that kids need role models, especially in an era of social media. We want to make sure there are role models who can be there to inspire and engage with them.”

The leaders will be year-12 students from schools such as Hasmonean, JFS, Immanuel, Yavneh College and King David’s Yavneh stream who have been involved with youth movements such as Bnei Akiva and Sinai.

“We don’t realise how important peerled grassroots leadership is,” he said.

The plan is for sixthformers to go into the primary schools once a month to run programmes. In many cases, they will be alumni of that primary themselves.

The primary children from year 6 will be split into small groups, each mentored by a madrich and madrichah from the secondary school. Gap year returnees will also be on hand to support the madrichim.

In December, for example, they will learn something about Chanucah and take part in some “Chanucalympic” activities. There will be an element of competition to see which primary group in the country does best.

Rabbi Shaw has drawn on his considerable experience of working with youth at Stanmore Synagogue, where he was community development rabbi, and with the United Synagogue’s young peole’s division Tribe.

At Stanmore, “I realised there was a massive drop out post bar-and batmitzvah,” he recalled. “I quickly realised the main issue was that if you want to keep them, you’ve to them have already engaged in a social group before,” he said.

“We began doing programmes when they were nine, 10, 11. What happened was the dropout rate fell from 80 per cent to 20 per cent.”

Yehudi will not stop at year 6 but continue when participants move to secondary school. The idea is for them to meet during year 7 to strengthen their connection with the local community.

“What we in Mizrachi are trying to do is to create the next generation of modern Orthodox leadership,” Rabbi Shaw said.

“We believe a lot of these kids are the future so we want them to be leaders.”