American Jewish Society for Service helps Habitat for Humanity

Various groups of volunteers have helped Heartland Habitat for Humanity build a home on 50th Place in Kansas City, Kan., that will become the residence of single mom Sherry Johnson and her soon-to-be-three children. There have been retirees, corporate groups; even the Kansas City Chiefs rookie class worked at the site a few weeks ago.

But when she heard a group of Jewish teens would be pitching in this summer, Johnson wondered whether they were doing the community service as a result of some post-conviction court order.

It is understandably hard, perhaps, to get one’s mind around the notion that 16 upper-middle-class teenagers would not only volunteer to work for Habitat for Humanity for six weeks this summer, but would pay for the privilege. But that’s just what the teens here under the auspices of the American Jewish Society for Service (www.ajss.org) have done.

Most of the do-gooders have come from the East Coast, and all but one are either 16 or 17 years old, and high school juniors- or seniors-to-be. There is a 15-year-old from Michigan in the group, too.

They are part of the 142nd summer service project that Washington-based AJSS will have completed in the 59 years of its existence.

Unskilled but enthusiastic
AJSS Executive Director Rena Convissor explained how the group wound up in greater Kansas City for the first time since 1993. Earlier this year, Convissor sent out a query letter to every group that had hosted an AJSS delegation in the past, asking if they wanted volunteers this summer, and Heartland Habitat’s Development Director Mark Naster responded.

“AJSS looks for agencies that can provide 16 unskilled but enthusiastic volunteers with a chance to do construction work for a full six weeks,” Convissor explained.

The teen participants are chosen after completing a competitive application process, and they must pay a tuition fee, as well as their own transportation costs, Convissor said.

She said AJSS looks for projects in parts of the country “different from where the kids come from.” For instance, when Convissor herself was a teen AJSS volunteer, she spent a summer in Jeanerette, La. AJSS’s other volunteer teams this summer are in Amarillo, Texas, and Tucson, Ariz.

AJSS tries to get the teens to “unplug” themselves from the computer, as well, during the summer experience, Convissor said.
To stretch its budget and promote community among participants, AJSS looks for churches or synagogues to host the teens. The leaders of Congregation Ohev Sholom responded to Convissor’s request for a local host, so the teens and their four young-adult chaperones bed down each night in classrooms in the synagogue building.

With its kosher kitchen, Ohev Sholom is an ideal host for this particular group of teens because they are religiously observant and thus keep kosher — the first AJSS group to be so constituted, Convissor said.

The group members form committees to decide such matters as cooking and entertainment. Each day after work, the teen volunteers are driven to the Jewish Community Campus, where the showers and other Jewish Community Center facilities have been made available to them for a nominal fee. Then they return to Ohev Sholom, where they sleep on air mattresses before getting up the next day and doing it all over again.

Except for Shabbat, that is. The group members arrived in the Kansas City area last week and attended Shabbat services at Ohev Sholom this past Saturday morning. This weekend, they will be up in Omaha, Neb., for a recreational visit.

How to build
At the site of the future Johnson home Tuesday morning, the AJSS teens were hard at work, priming interior walls and finishing the front-porch trim. Some local retirees were instructing them on the finer points of drilling holes in wood, for example.
Dan Cohen of Wayland, Mass., explained why he came to Kansas City this summer.

“I wanted to do something Jewish and build houses for people who need help,” Cohen said. “I have worked in soup kitchens before, and it felt good. But I thought if I helped to put a roof over somebody’s head and floor beneath their feet, it would feel even better. And it does!”
Nina Mermelstein from Long Island, N.Y., agreed that the work has been rewarding thus far.

“The other day, we moved a bunch of dirt around the yard,” she said. “It wasn’t fun, but it has to be done. It shows you that even the little things matter. And then at the end of the day, when you look back and see what we’ve done, it’s clear that we helped out.”
Noteh Krauss of Toronto is glad to pick up some practical skills while he volunteers.

“When I think about volunteering, I think about helping other people,” he said, “but I still like to consider what I get out of it. Here I am learning practical skills. We get to meet the homeowner and see how it affects her. And we make friends.”

That latter aspect is important, as well, to Amanda Lederman of Westchester, N.Y.

“We also learn how to build a community,” she said. “We decide what food we eat and what activities we do. We clean up our rooms. They don’t take care of us every minute of the day.”

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