This past week was an extremely productive week for Ezra Academy’s Extra Curricular. The week started off when Ezra sent a team of four students to participate for the school’s very first time in NCSY’s JUMP competition. JUMP (Jewish Unity Mentoring Program) is a high school competition where teams from all over North America come together and try to help solve or at least address important issues affecting their communities.
The first part of the competition took place from this past Sunday to Tuesday at the Stamford Crowne Plaza. Teams were expected to pinpoint an area of interest and create ways in which they hope to help rectify the issue that they chose. With many exciting programs, sessions, and a tremendous amount of work, three teams out of 14 were chosen to receive grants toward their project.
Ezra Academy was selected as one of the three winning teams. Their focus on spreading awareness of how dangerous and deadly vaping is was an idea the panel of judges felt was worthwhile investing in. While they received the first grant, there are three more opportunities for any of the teams to receive more grants throughout the duration of the competition. The Ezra JUMP team has been hard at work with their resolve to help prevent vaping, and they look forward to making a huge impact on this dangerous habit.
The week then came to a close, but not before a team of students participated in the Apprentice Challenge on Friday. Hosted by Adelphi University as one of their admission events, 250 students from the local New York area were given a marketing challenge influenced by this year’s event sponsor, GEICO. Teams were given the task to create a promotion to raise awareness and change the behavior pertaining to distracted driving, specifically texting while driving. Five students from all the participants were chosen as the top presenters and asked to speak in front of all of the people present. We are proud that our very own senior, Benjamin Borokhov, was among those chosen.