BBYO: up and coming youth organisation

​As a new youth organization, only recently restarting in Sydney, BBYO NSW is moving in the right direction and becoming an “up and coming” youth organisation in Sydney.

B’nai B’rith Youth Organisation is an international pluralistic Jewish youth organisation with over 80,000 teens in over 55 different countries. It offers teenagers opportunities they do not find anywhere else and BBYO is run by teens for teens. It’s a place where we are encouraged to have fun, connect with other Jewish teens in our community and around the world, develop leadership skills and Jewish Identities. It is a place where we are inspired to learn, grow, give to our community and most importantly be ourselves. BBYO NSW allows us the chance to run the events we want to, and accomplish incredible things. We are growing at immense rates with an incredible board, consisting of, Amy Forman, Devan Bloch, Meital Gertel, Sam Raichman, Caitlin Gordon, and myself, Ruby Borer all aged between 13 and 15.
With BBYO NSW starting mere weeks before the 2020 lockdown, we have been privileged to have run many events in person and online.

We have been lucky enough to spend time on zoom running programs within our chapter and with chapters around the globe.  As a chapter, we have run games nights, bake-offs, and most recently an escape room, over zoom, with great turnouts that exceeded our wildest dreams. We have also had the immense honour of pairing up with teens around the world, in places like South Africa, New York, Russia and closer to home, in Melbourne to run incredible programs. In the privileged position that NSW has been regarding the COVID-19 Pandemic, we were lucky enough to have run many in-person events as well, with Havdallah and Shabbat services, visits to the Shalom College Adamama Farm and Laser Tag games. All in person events have been huge hits and we are all excited to get back to doing our thing in person.

BBYO NSW would not have been possible without our parent organisation, B’nai B’rith. B’nai B’rith has not only given us a home here in Sydney and allowed us to lead the B’nai B’rith holiday kids club, but it has also given us our advisor. Vivienne Radomsky, the project Manager of B’nai B’rith NSW who has been our incredible advisor since the beginning, guiding us in everything we do. She is the best that we could have asked for and never fails to inspire, help and support us. As crazy as some of our ideas may be, she always helps us find a way to successfully pull them off with her own fun and unique ideas along the way. She has taught us so much and encouraged us to continually grow.  She is always at our events and her incredible photography skills produce some of the best photos we have ever seen. We are so thankful for everything she has done and continues to do for us and could not imagine BBYO without her.

We as the board are looking forward to the opportunities that BBYO will bring to us. We are looking forward to growing as a chapter, further developing our bonds with each other, and learning new leadership skills. As well as having the opportunities to take part in the international opportunities that BBYO offers including the International Leadership Network and, hopefully in a post COVID world, travelling to America to take part in the International Convention or incredible Summer Opportunities. BBYO NSW has changed the lives of the people who have had the opportunity to be on the board so far and we are looking forward to the opportunity to continue growing as individuals and as a chapter.

This article was written by 15-yr-old Ruby Borer