Tufts Hillel in May will be taking a group of Jewish students to Morocco for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's (JDC) first?evershort?termservice?learning trip there.
Tufts was selected to pilot the trip because of Tufts Hillel's history of successful participation in past service?learning trips to other countries, according to Lenny Goldstein, acting executive director and associate director of Tufts Hillel.
"Tufts Hillel has had a relationship with the [JDC] for many years now," Goldstein said in an email. "The JDC does amazing work supporting Jewish communities worldwide, and we've had the chance to send students on a number of trips (including to Kazakhstan, Argentina and India) to meet and work with various diaspora Jewish communities."
The group will be in Morocco from May 29 to June 7. The group's main goal is to contribute to the Moroccan Jewish community there through service projects.
Goldstein said that in addition to the service work, cultural exchange will be an important aspect of the trip.
"Students will have a chance to get to know several communities of Moroccan Jews very well, to forge friendships, to have each group able to learn from the other, and there will be a major service project undertaken as well," he said.
The JDC is an organization actively working on humanitarian projects across the globe, typically related to Jewish communities in the diaspora.
The JDC has done work in Morocco before, but this is the first trip in which university students will engage in a short?term service?learning trip there.
According to Andrew Lutz, the student trip coordinator, the group headed to Morocco this summer will be working on one or two main service projects.
"Some of the programs [the JDC has] there are an elderly center, they have a youth center, and they also have a Jewish day school, and they provide medical services," Lutz, a junior, said. "So what we're doing will be involved with at least one, if not two, of those things."
Prior to the trip, participants will fundraise to buy electronic school supplies for children in Moroccan schools.
The group will spend most of its time in Casablanca, which is home to Morocco's largest Jewish community, but will also likely travel to Rabat and Marrakech.
Melissa Mandelbaum, head of the Tufts' chapter of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee University group, said that the group tries to raise awareness of the fact that there are Jewish populations in places where people do not tend to think there are, such as Uganda, India and Argentina.
"People don't really know what the populations are like and what their needs are and how similar they are to being Jewish here [in the United States]," Mandelbaum, a sophomore who is also a staff writer for the Daily, said.
Lutz, who traveled to Argentina through Tufts Hillel and the JDC last year, said that his experience with the beneficiaries of the program was among the most fulfilling aspects of the trip.
"It was really an eye?opening experience to see how the rest of the world lives and really touching just to get a taste of somebody's life and to hear stories of people who have really suffered their entire lives and to realize how privileged most of us are in the United States," Lutz said. "It was more than just the work. It was really just bonding with the community, because we got to work with Argentinian peers our own age in doing that."
