A Community of Leaders: Cteen Takes a Grassroots Approach

This past February, a small group of individuals met in Teaneck, NJ, to talk about launching a new program that would engage local teenagers with community events based around Jewish holidays and themes.

Rabbi Michoel Goldin, the local Chabad representative and the other seven participants—teenagers all—covered everything from the budget and PR, to building a local base of teenagers.

Eventually, these seven took the helm of the Teaneck, NJ chapter of the national Chabad Teen Network (Cteen) that Rabbi Goldin had previously run on his own. The board of seven hit restart on the youth program and created a new initiative under the name Jewish Teens in Action (JTA).

The students quickly proved themselves as real grassroots game changers: at their first event on Thursday, March 17, they drew 125 teens. That’s a 100 percent increase in attendance compared to last year, where 60 teens came to a Purim event that rang in at $800 with no funds raised to cover any part of it. This year, the event cost $1,400, but they fundraised $900, says seventeen year-old budget manager Tamar Schulman.

“I noticed a big decline at Cteen last year; turnouts at our events were becoming much smaller,” says Rabbi Goldin. “Then one day, it dawned on me: why not empower the teens and let them make decisions? Instead of me dictating to the teens what should happen, when, where and how, I needed to let them decide how to attract their friends by making events more fun and appealing.”

They divided the jobs into groups of two, explains Schulman. “There are two PR people who are in charge of our Facebook page, sending texts about programs and distributing flyers and invitations. Two other guys are the go-getters; they arrange the details of every event, like what kind of booths we had at our last carnival.” But together, they form a cohesive team: “For example, if someone comes up with an idea that doesn’t fit our budget, my friend and I on the financial team will say we can’t do it.”

Goldin likes to compare his model to the difference between a ‘club’ and a ‘movement.’ A club, he says, is top-down, where participants follow a program that has been designed by the leader at the top. By contrast, a movement is driven by individuals who work together to achieve their goal, an approach that seeks the input of multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process.

Just a few days after JTA’s successful event, four teens in Wilmette, IL organized a Cteen Purim bash on March 20. Many of the 50 guests were new faces, but there were also a number of teens who had attended Chabad Hebrew School in Wilmette but had been out of touch since graduating Hebrew School, says Esther Leah Flinkenstein, youth director at Chabad of Wilmette.

“It was stressful, we weren’t sure we could put it all together,” admits eighteen year-old Rebecca Zaslavasky. “But after the success of this event, we’re looking forward to making an even bigger event on Lag B’Omer.”

Launched in 2008 by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Cteen is a national network of teens with 55 chapters in the US, Canada and even Guatemala, counting some 3,000 teenagers. The grassroots-level activities at JTA and Cteen in Wilmette, IL are important milestones because they are defining the future for Cteen chapers around the country, says Rabbi Mendel Perlstein, director of Cteen.

The successes of JTA and Cteen in Wilmette are prodding the national network in that direction, and Cteen chapters that “have established a core group of committed teens should begin implementing this new model. This is the next big step for Cteen,” Perlstein says.

Cteen chapters are all run by Chabad representatives. Involving the teens means less work for Chabad reps, and more time to focus on other community programs without compromising on this front.

And there’s a limit to how creative one person can be and sustain growth in any social network aiming to engage teenagers, who live in an age of 24/7 connectivity. A Kaiser Family Foundation report released last year found that on average, children ages 8 to 18 spend seven hours and 38 minutes a day using social media. So while Chabad reps are competing with a young, wired demographic, at JTA, it’s the teenagers who are brainstorming to find ways to reach more of their friends at their own schools, and then beyond their schools and circle of friends.

Rabbi Goldin envisions a network of Cteens who are empowered to make decisions that would make their friends lives more meaningful. Chabad Shluchim would compare notes, and the “teens who are organizing events at each chapter could join to create a powerful network of young people who are passionate about being more involved in Judaism, and getting their friends involved too,” he says.

Of course, JTA is also cultivating leadership qualities and a sense of responsibility in the teenagers in charge. We try to make it make fun to reach more people, says Sruli Farkas, 17, who is on the board at JTA and is currently working a pre-Pesach car wash event that will raise funds for JTA’s community work.

“I enjoy working together with my friends to accomplish our goal: to reach more people and make a positive impact on others,” he says.