The summer experience of the average Yeshiva student can be pretty exotic, with many students often heading to locales in Israel and Europe, but it is a very rare Yeshiva student that spends his or her summer in Africa. YC senior Jon Kessler and SCW sophomore Yael Fischer, two Yeshiva students who have never met, are joining a large group of Jewish collegiates in Ghana this summer on American Jewish Welfare Services' (AJWS) International Jewish Collegiate Corps (IJCC), doing development work to build homes, schools, and the like.

Both Kessler and Fischer have built impressive resumes of activist involvement. Among other things, Kessler led the YC Literacy Program this year, in which Uptown students assist local middle-schoolers in learning to read, while Fischer recently joined an effort to send needed materials to Azerbaijan. Fischer also sees her first YU experience as leading her down this path, remembering that "when I first participated in YUNMUN as a teenager, it was eye-opening to note the actual statistics; as a kid, you often have vague notions of poverty and what that means, but then you get confronted with hard statistics of illiteracy and infant mortality rates, and I was hit with the realization that this was something that I needed to help fix."

One significant stumbling block to YU students' attempts at joining worldwide activist efforts has been the lack of Orthodox programs that focus on activism beyond the Jewish community. Indicates Fischer, "When I initially heard about IJCC, I was hesitant to join the program, since its not geared towards Orthodox students, but, after some research, I could not find a single Orthodox organization that focused on developing countries." Kessler was similarly disappointed by the lack of Orthodox organizations, but sees a potential upside in that dearth, exclaiming that "there are so many Jewish organizations that are geared towards bridging gaps between Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, but this is a program where a unifying effort isn't necessary, because it is implicit: unity is a natural outgrowth of working together towards a common goal."

The IJCC is a grueling program, with four straight weeks spent in Ghana without running water or most material comforts. Both students admit that they have never had an experience to challenge this one for testing their physical endurance. Says Kessler, "I can't even imagine what the experience will be like," emphasizing that, "we've all had our own experiences roughing it, but those can't come close to this." Fischer also likes to note the vagueness of their job descriptions, which IJCC's literature indicates as consisting of "digging, lifting, mixing, filling, banging, and building."

The response that both students have received from others has been overwhelmingly encouraging. Kessler notes that "ninety-nine percent of responses have been positive." One of the aspects of IJCC's programming that Fischer sees as ensuring its success is its requirement that all participants remain active in the program for a full year after they've returned to the States. Fischer declares that this is what she views as "the nicest part about the program…in which we'll get to attend three seminars, with letter-writing and speaking commitments." Further, Fischer indicates that, "unlike with other programs, I won't have to wonder about how I'll be able to continue having a similar impact."