High school students give back through the Va’ad Squad

They could be at home playing "Grand Theft Auto" or watching "Pimp My Ride." Instead, students at San Francisco's Jewish Community High School of the Bay (JCHS) spend much of their free time collecting items for a local food bank or picking up trash along the shoreline.

It's all in a day's work for the JCHS Va'ad Squad, a campus club that makes tzedakah as popular as the prom or senior ditch day.

Va'ad Squad is part of the JCHS social action requirement, a minimum of 20 hours a year per student, to be exact. Last year, the student body collectively logged about 900 volunteer hours. Some pitched in to paint a public school building on Treasure Island. Some wielded hammers for Habitat for Humanity. All did something to give back to the community.

"I thought this was a necessity," says senior Samantha Strauss, 17, the founder of Va'ad Squad. "It's a Jewish value to help out."

Strauss started the club during the 2002-2003 academic year. The idea was to have a tzedakah effort overseen by a committee of students from every grade. This year 19 students sit on the committee, nearly double from last year. The group's name stems from the Hebrew va'ad gemilut chasadim, or office of works of lovingkindness.

"I'm so impressed with how well they took the reins," says Erin Fish, JCHS director of student activities and Va'ad Squad facilitator, "and how much faculty and parents supported the students in their ideas."

Fish basically sat back and let the students do their thing. One of those students, senior Aurora Simcovich, was also a founding Va'ad Squad committee member.

"My main motivation for this came from going to this school," says the 17-year-old. "I felt fortunate to be learning in this environment."

Simcovich had a strong interest in environmental issues, and helped organize Va'ad Squad's Save the Bay effort last May. A busload of JCHS students went to Palo Alto to remove non-native plants from the shoreline. Another contingent of students has been tutoring public school kids in reading as part of the Jewish Coalition for Literacy.

The club also launched a school supplies drive to raise money for underprivileged Israeli students. Students raised exactly $613, a magic figure since 613 is the number of mitzvot in the Torah.

Va'ad Squad's most recent project has been a food drive for the San Francisco Food Bank. Last year, students took in 500 pounds of donated food products. The goal this year: 1,000 pounds.

To get the student body excited about tzedakah, the Va'ad Squad committee organized a community outreach fair, at which 19 local nonprofit organizations set up tables in the JCHS commons. Attending students had the opportunity to learn about their volunteering options.

These days Strauss and her fellow committee members meet once a week to plan activities, both long-term and short-term. Next June, Va'ad Squad will lose Strauss, Simcovich and all the other seniors. That's why the committee has taken pains to groom younger students for leadership positions.

That includes freshman like Aryeh Canter, 14. Canter first caught the tzedakah spirit after his bar mitzvah last year when he spent a week tutoring at the Hebrew Academy and working at a local food bank. Like Simcovich, he considers himself fortunate to go to a school where giving is a given.

"I'm really blessed," says the San Francisco native. "My family can send me to a great private Jewish school when there are thousands of kids who don't have the luxuries I have."

But it isn't all about duty for Canter. "Va'ad Squad is a lot of fun," he adds. "All I want to do is help people."

That sentiment drives Strauss and Simcovich as well, and will likely keep Va'ad Squad alive and kicking for years to come. "Our main goal was to get something done," says Strauss. "We now have a foundation for what can happen."