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Return to Uganda: Jewish Agency’s “Jewish Peace Corps” Expands to Third
African Country
New Uganda center to join existing centers in Ghana, South Africa, Mexico,
Israel;
Jewish volunteers from Israel and around the world to work on projects in
education, healthcare, agriculture, arts
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Project TEN—known as the
“Jewish Peace Corps”—is partnering with a coalition of organizations to join
a new volunteer center in Namulanda, Uganda. The center will be run in
partnership with Brit, a coalition of organizations that include the Israel
Volunteer Association, Inspiration Arts for Humanity, and Brit Olam, who
have been operating in Uganda for the past ten years. The center will bring
together Jewish young people from Israel and around the world to engage in
volunteer work with distressed populations in the area.
The Uganda volunteer center is centrally located in the town of Namulanda,
between the capital city of Kampala and Entebbe. The volunteers will
concentrate on sustainable development and infrastructure work for communal
projects in the fields of education, healthcare, agriculture, and the arts.
Amongst other things, the volunteers will run healthcare projects in
poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Kampala and will work in elementary
schools in nearby villages. They will also help create a local youth
movement and develop a leadership group that will receive intensive training
in technology and education. The first group of volunteers arrived at the
center in September.
This is Project TEN’s third volunteer center in Africa, joining the existing
center in Winneba, Ghana and another new center in Durban, South Africa.
Project TEN centers also currently exist in Oaxaca, Mexico and Harduf,
Israel. The Israeli center works primarily with Bedouin communities and with
groups with special needs. Additional Project TEN centers are expected to be
opened in Latin America and East Asia in the near future.
Project TEN is based on values of service and Jewish activism, offering
Jewish young people from Israel and communities around the world
opportunities to volunteer in various places around the world for several
months, in partnership with local organizations. Project TEN director Yarden
Zornberg notes that Project TEN centers, which sends out some 450 volunteers
per year from all over the Jewish world, enable young people to combine
their desire to get to know the world with their desire to take part in
repairing it together with their peers worldwide. At the end of their
volunteer period, these young people return to their countries of origin
strongly motivated to engage in activism in their communities and worldwide.
Learn more at tenprogram.org
The Jewish Agency for Israel is the largest Jewish nonprofit organization in
the world. Founded in 1929, The Jewish Agency was instrumental in founding
and building the State of Israel and has brought more than three million
Jews home to the Jewish state, including tens of thousands this past year
alone. Today the organization serves as the primary link between Israel and
the Jewish world, bringing young Jews to experience life in the Jewish state
and sending young Israelis to share their country with Jewish communities
around the world. The Jewish Agency works to narrow social gaps within
Israel and empower all segments of Israeli society while dispatching Israeli
young people and theirworldwide Jewish peers to volunteer in underprivileged
communities in Africa, Latin America, and Israel’s socioeconomic periphery.
The organization serves as the Jewish world’s first responder, prepared to
rescue and bring Jews home to Israel from countries where they are at risk
and addressing emergency situations in Israel and Jewish communities abroad.
Learn more at jewishagency.org