Defining the Tallahassee Jewish Federation

Q: What does the Tallahassee Jewish Federation do?

A: The Tallahassee Jewish Federation (Federation) plays three key roles to enhance Jewish life.

• First, it serves as an umbrella organization to support other Jewish organizations in town and facilitate coordination among them
  
• Second, Federation undertakes initiatives to serve the local Jewish community, and also to help Jews in need in Israel and throughout the world.
  
• Third, Federation raises funds to pursue these goals.

Q: What programs does the Tallahassee Federation promote locally?

A: Federation’s current initiatives focus on two of our priorities - meeting the needs of our youth and supporting the needs of World Jewry - in addition to serving other key local constituencies (our seniors and emerging leaders), and the community at large. A partial list of activities and projects follows:

1. Serving our youth.
   
   • Camp Scholarships. A major Federation priority is to provide scholarships to help our children attend Jewish summer camps. We provided more than $17,000 in scholarships for our youth in 2008.
     
   • Travel Scholarships. Scholarships for our youth to travel to and study in Israel and beyond. This year we also provided scholarships to students who studied in Israel and to a student who interned for a Rabbi trying to revitalize Jewish life in Poland.
     
   • Camp Shalom. Federation helps sponsor Camp Shalom, a local Jewish day camp. The Camp was extremely successful once again in ‘08 – in addition to 60 campers each week, more than 40 of our Jewish teens served as counselors.
   • Teen Philanthropy Initiative. In the fall of ’08, Federation launched its Teen Philanthropy Initiative, intended to bring together Jewish teens from throughout the area and empower the teens to help meet community needs. Teens from different congregations and five high schools (Chiles, Leon, Lincoln, Maclay, and Rickards) are participating. They have the responsibility to allocate a fund of approximately $7,000 to organizations that serve the needy - each teen contributed $100 to participate on the Teen Board and Federation added $5,000 to leverage the teens’ contributions. Our hope is that this initiative will educate the teens about community needs and help them develop decision-making skills and the ability to work collaboratively that will enable them to contribute effectively to their communities in the future.
   
   
2. Engaging our young leaders. Federation recently launched a Young Leaders Initiative to engage our “next generation” in the work of the Federation – to help these individuals learn about community needs and prepare them to take leadership roles in building and strengthening our community.
   
3. Senior citizen programs.Meeting the needs of the local Jewish retirement community. Federation is pleased to help sponsor Senior Schmooze as an opportunity for our seniors to meet and interact. It also supports National Council of Jewish Women initiatives such as NCJW’s recent program to enhance recreational opportunities for the Tallahassee retirement community. Federation is working with community members to develop a survey of members of the Jewish retirement community in town, which is likely to grow in the coming years as the population ages.