I have had the pleasure of working with Maya Pollack and Lezah Winick over the last few years as they have served on the board of the high school youth group I advise at Congregation Beth Israel. Three years ago we started YOD (Youth Organized Donations), a philanthropy or tzedakah (Hebrew for justice, often translated to mean charity) project. The youth group board researches and selects a local nonprofit for which they will raise money and volunteer their time. The congregation matches up to $500 of what the teens raise each year. To date, our group has raised over $1,700 for nonprofit organizations that support local youth. The congregation has contributed another $1,500.

We’ve talked a lot about philanthropy or tzedakah in our youth group meetings. Here are Maya and Lezah’s thoughts…

Deborah: How do you define philanthropy for yourself?

Lezah: I define it as doing what you can to give back and being a leader in your own way. There’s not one way for philanthropy. You can do it in so many ways. Like for me, it’s using my voice and my passion to be able to inform other people and bring awareness to things that don’t get much attention.

Maya: Mine’s pretty similar. It’s about doing your part in the community and giving back to the place where you’ve grown up and the world that has given you so much. Whether it’s doing a YOD project or going to clean up a beach or educating your fellow students…it ranges.

D: How are you both engaging in philanthropy and who are you engaging with?

L: Definitely through my youth group. Last year I was YOD Coordinator and Social Action Vice President, so I was in charge of getting our group involved with an organization and not just raising money, but also volunteering. I’m continuing to help Maya this year. I am also involved with the Red Cross. I’m President of the Red Cross Club. So, I’m always trying to be involved and help out.

M: This YOD position and Social Action position is mainly what I put my passion into. I’m trying to find the best way that we can give back. And also help the people around us who don’t necessarily think of doing philanthropy and help them realize how easy it is to do it. I do something similar with my National Honor Society too.

D: Who influences you in your philanthropy?

L: Everyone.

M: The first person that comes to my mind is my dad. That’s what he does. It’s his job. He is working in Salinas…helping Chinatown to find a way to just put in a bathroom for people. He’s probably my main inspiration of seeing how you can take this little passion as a teenager and continue it throughout your whole life and create a profession out of it.

L: My grandma was always involved. She ran for mayor for her little town and served for four terms….In her free time she still would go out and make meals for people. I’ve always grown up around that—always being a good kind of busy. Even now, she’s 83 and she’s head volunteer at the hospital. She oversees all the volunteers that are a lot younger than her, but she has twice the energy that they have. Her passion to get involved and volunteer drives that energy.

D: How have you learned about philanthropy?

M: It’s different experiences that I’ve had ever since I was little. It started with the I-HELP program where we served the homeless men. Having conversations with them about their lives and realizing that they are regular people and not being afraid. It’s going from that to slowly having other experiences with different organizations that we’ve worked with every year. Each one has expanded my knowledge.

L: We always had tzedakah throughout Hebrew school and we had similar programs, like Pennies for Peace in middle school. We got to choose a program and do it ourselves. That introduced it. My grandma has always been present and it’s always been a part of my family.

D: What has been your favorite experience with YOD?

L: Last year, presenting it [the check to Teddy Bears with Heart], and being able to say, WE DID IT. Not many people expect teenagers to take their time to get involved and give back. So, when we tell people this is what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and we’re really excited about it, it’s great to watch people’s reactions, “oh wow, that’s pretty awesome.” They weren’t surprised, but they were. Being able to say we did that together and present it [the check] to Susan and seeing how much it helped.

M: I really liked when we had a meeting where we had three bags of teddy bears and we tagged and sorted every single one. You’re taking the idea of donating money to an organization [one step further] and then really putting in work. We helped.

D: What are you looking forward to about YOD this year?

M: I’m excited to expand our thinking. We’re doing something we’ve never done before with the environment and that’s completely uncharted territory. And it will be fun to see how many volunteer opportunities we actually take advantage of and how much passion we can develop in our group.

L: I’m excited to learn….We can tell people, “did you know there’s this much trash in the ocean?” This could be incorporated into our activities. I’m excited to get involved and volunteer, but also to bring it back into our [youth group] events. We can have an educational aspect that I think will be awesome.