This year, the Jewish Volunteer Center is partnering with the Holocaust Memorial of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation to pair students with Holocaust survivors who never had the chance to become B’nai Mitzvah. Students and survivors are spending 10 hours together over the course of four programs from October through January 2011. Projects include learning about the Holocaust, touring the Holocaust Memorial with survivors, and beautifying and planting at the Memorial.

Students are being asked to honor their survivor partner during their Bar or Bat Mitzvah service and make a gift of $180 to the Annual Greater Miami Jewish Federation/UJA Campaign. They will receive a certificate of completion and their Young Lion of Judah jewelry gift – a silver bracelet for girls and a silver talit clip for boys.

For more information about the Young Lion of Judah Program, please contact the Jewish Volunteer Center at Volunteer@JewishMiami.org or 786.866.8414.

Mitzvah Miami

Mitzvah Miami is our annual high school service project. Offering the chance for teens to plan and implement a new project each spring. Past projects have included: organizing a Senior Prom for the Senior Citizens at the Michael-Ann Russell Jewish Community Center, cleaning up Miami's beaches, restoring the Jewish graves at a Miami cemetery, and participating in a Reuse, Rethink, Recycle program. All programs are hands-on and include a featured speaker in our community.


J-Serve, our annual volunteer day for youth and teens, gives young adults the opportunity to participate in meaningful projects in our community. In partnership with BBYO and Mitzvah Miami, teens have planted an organic garden and helped clean up the graves in the Jewish section of a Miami cemetery.

Jewish Community Volunteer Day, sponsored by Ford Motor Company
The December 25 Jewish Community Volunteer Day is a new annual tradition. With over a dozen projects throughout Miami-Dade, there is one to fit your needs. Projects range from beautifying our community to visiting the sick and feeding the homeless.


Everything but the Turkey, sponsored by Ford Motor CompanyAt Everything but the Turkey, our pre-Thanksgiving volunteer program, participants put on their chef hats as they slice, dice, mix and chop ingredients for the accompaniments of the holiday meal. Jewish families in need and local homeless shelters receive over 1,800 servings of food as a result of this outstanding program.

Martin Luther King National Day of Service
Martin Luther King National Day of Service is a day of service and learning for families. In the past, participants have harvested, planted and helped to maintain Roots in the City, an organic garden feeding the homeless in Miami’s historic Overtown District. Families also have the opportunity to learn from a Jewish educator and reflect on the meaning of tikkun olam (repair the world).