Silver Spring's Rivki Engelhart with Beit Shemesh campers

"Kefiada sounded like a really good way to experience a true Israeli environment by working with Israeli children," says Rivki Engelhart of Silver Spring. "I'm surprised how much harder the communication barrier makes it to work with children."

Engelhart, a 20 year-old student at the University of Maryland, along with 11 fellow Kefiada volunteers from the Washington DC area, is spending the summer teaching English to 100 summer campers from Beit Shemesh. The UJA Federation of Greater Washington is linked with Israel's Beit Shemesh-Adulam region through Partnership 2000, a Jewish Agency-United Jewish Appeal program which links 550 Diaspora communities with 27 development regions in Israel. More than 230 Kefiada volunteers throughout Israel are teaching English in a fun setting to some 2,500 youngsters this summer, making a real impact on Israeli society.

Beit Shemesh residents host Engelhart and her fellow counselors for the duration of the three week camp, which concludes at the end of July. The Kefiada volunteers are enjoying the local nightlife, interacting with college students from the area, and touring attractions in the region.

Mark Rabkin of Gaithersburg teaches Ethiopian immigrant camper English

"Through their daily interaction with the campers and their families, Kefiada volunteers get a real sense of what it's like to live in Israel's development areas," notes Yigal Yerushalmi, Director General of the Jewish Agency's Israel Department, which runs Partnership 2000. "People-to-people connections form the heart of Partnership 2000."

"The unity and the friendship of our group is more than I expected," adds Bethesda's Michael Marion. Noting Beit Shemesh's proximity to Jerusalem, he adds that "we get to travel to amazingly different places so easily."

The Jewish Agency has been operating Kefiadot for more than a decade, but this year's volunteers enjoyed an interesting new twist - a Jewish identity seminar courtesy of the Livnot Ulehibanot (to build and be built) organization. The volunteer counselors delved into their Jewish roots in a pluralistic setting, sharing their thoughts over a spiritually charged Shabbat dinner in Safed.

"Experiencing Shabbat for the first time through the eyes of people who have never experienced Shabbat before was a really incredible inexperience," notes Engelhart. "I enjoyed being in Safed for my first Shabbat with my new friends."