This past week 25 JAFI P2K pre-army young emissaries, shinshinim, met in White Plains, New York as part of the annual JAFI emissary conference in North America. Shinshinim are high school graduates from Israel who defer their military service and are sent to their P2K Jewish community in the USA for a one-year program of volunteer activity and service in the community. There they will meet and interact with young Jews through dialogue and interactive creative programming making "their" Israel alive for their community.

The shinshinim have been in their respective P2K communities and living with host families since the beginning of September and have begun to "make their mark" working with the youth and students in the communities afternoon schools, supplemental Hebrew schools, old age homes, Jewish Community Centers, Synagogues, Day Schools, to name just a few.

The conference gave the JAFI coordinators of the program, Rebecca Stern and Yael Goss, a chance to hear about the implementation of the skills taught to them in their training program in Kiryat Moriah during the summer.

In addition to working with the shinshinim at the conference on issues related to work sites, supervisors, host families, cultural differences and program development, the 25 shinshinim also created and ran programs for the students at the Solomon Schechter in White Plains and the Hebrew Academy of Greenwich, Connecticut.