Melbourne Diller Teen Fellows

The most recent Diller workshop was based around the idea of volunteering. It began, like most workshops with a peer ran activity that this week touched on the topic of disabilities and how we as a society perceive and treat those around us.  We were then given some 'tweets' to read and reflect on about volunteering and what it means to others. This lead to a very heated discussion on the importance of volunteering and how we should be going about it. After many back and forth's of opinions and views, we were then given the task to take what we had just discussed and make it a practical thing. We were asked to go in groups of threes and interview people at the one voice festival that will be going towards a video to promote the festival and as well be sent to our partnership region in Israel the Golan Height, to give them an understanding and insight to the Melbourne Jewish Community. The "In One Voice" festival is an amazing organization that we were luc

This week the fellows were exposed to the International Diller Teen Fellows model of project planning. Throughout the year, each Diller Teen Fellows group has this session ran for them in preparation for their Self-Managment Shabbaton. In Israel this session is called "Hamasa Shel Shoko Ve'Lachmaiya" (The Journey of Chocolate Milk and Bread Rolls), in North America it is the " Journey of Milk and Cookies", we in Melbourne had the " Journey of Milo and Haymishe Cookies". The model looks at who one should prepare for a project, by figuring out the Mission, Vision and goals. We explored how to write these by being split up into group of organisations  from governments, to charity organisations and created mission and vision statements as well as a set of goals. We then brainstormed a theme for our Shabbaton that we will run in May. This session was very influential. We learnt some incredibly useful skills in planning. We learnt the importance ha

Diller Teen Fellows has been one of the most impressive programs I have ever participated in. It has opened many doors to wonderful opportunities and experiences, such as the meeting held on Sunday the 6 th  of March. Our lovely leader, Ellie, organised an Israeli guest speaker, Ayelet, to teach the Melbourne cohort the importance of speech, eye contact and posture, when speaking publicly as well as when faced with the difficulties of speaking in front of a camera for television.   This session has been the most interesting yet, when I say interesting I mean unique, slightly strange, and memorable and most importantly fun. Ayelet had organised speaking exercises, in which we stretched our legs and had our hands strategically placed on a wall in line with our shoulders. We each had a pre prepared speech about an inspirational person that impacted our lives greatly, and repeated the paragraph to the wall. The wall had become our “new best friend”, it was a great listener, it never