April 29, 2004

Enrollment in NCSY Summer Programs to Israel Up 100 Percent Over Last Year

Enrollment in the National Conference of Synagogue Youth’s (NCSY) Israel summer programs is up 100 percent over last year.

“Our nine programs going to Israel are full,” declared Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch, National Education Director of NCSY and Director of Summer Programming. “Kollel for boys and Michlelet for girls, our summer learning programs, are our most popular Israel programs. The programs that also go to Europe such as Ukraine (JOLT I and JOLT II), Prague (Israel Leadership Challenge, The Jerusalem Journey, Kollel and Michlelet), and Spain (Spain and Israel Adventure) are also very popular. The situation in Israel seems to have calmed down and parents have confidence in NCSY to offer a controlled and secure way of traveling to Israel.”

NCSY subsidizes all of its trips, leading to lower prices than comparable trips and helping to boost enrollment.

NCSY’s national director, Zale Newman, a proven expert in marketing, declared, “The popularity of NCSY summer programs results from ‘niche’ marketing. In other words, we look for specific interests on the part of our audience and create programs in response to those interests. These niches include not just trips to Israel, but studying programs such as Kollel and Michlelet, sports programs such as Camp Sports and Summer Experience for Girls, volunteer opportunity programs such as Yad B’Yad and Volunteers for Israel, and traveling programs such as JOLT and the Israel Leadership Challenge.”

Places in NCSY’s North American summer programs are filling up quickly but are still available. Openings include:

• Outward Bound, a wilderness experience in Canada;
• Caravan West, a summer program for teens who want to explore the West Coast;
• Yad B’Yad, a trip for teens and Yachad members – young people with learning and developmental disabilities -- to travel the West Coast;
• Summer Experience for Girls, a four-week camp at the Golden Acres Dude Ranch in upstate New York; and
• Camps Sports, a camp for boys in Baltimore, combining sports and learning.

For more information on NCSY North American summer programs, costs, and scholarship availability, visit www.ncsy.org; or contact Uriel Weisz at 1-888-Tour-4-You; or email summer@ou.org.

The Orthodox Union, now in its second century of service to the Jewish community of North America and beyond, is a world leader in community and synagogue services, adult education, youth work through NCSY, political action through the IPA, and advocacy for persons with disabilities through Yachad and Our Way. Its kosher supervision label, the , is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 275,000 products manufactured in 68 countries around the globe.

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