LX Silver-Mahr
Internship placement: Limmund
Personal Statement
My name is LX Silver-Mahr. I am a 4th year Social Work undergraduate at Carleton University. My academic work for the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies has primarily focused on masculinity and Judaism. As a social work student, fostering community and the opportunity to create spaces for discussion and reflection is highly important to me which is why I am excited to be working with Limmud. I am looking forward to promoting and further developing community education initiatives. Through this internship, I hope to be able to further develop my planning and organizational skills as well as my ability to facilitate and coordinate programming.
Blog #2
March 24, 2019
My placement at Limmud has been an interesting journey. I chose Limmud because I wanted to gain more experience in community organizing and education. Programs like Limmud offer immense value to communities as they are a forum for learning and hearing a variety of voices on many different topics. What I found appealing in particular about the Limmud philosophy is the absence of hierarchy. Everyone is there to learn, including those giving presentations and those who are listening. No one voice is prioritized over another. It also provides a space for different facets of the community to engage in mutual learning and dialogue. The opportunity to be able to engage in community education initiatives was an enriching experience for me as someone about to graduate from a Bachelor of Social Work, as I hope to continue this type of work in my career.
My placement did not take the form of many other DFL placements, as there was no office to report to weekly. In terms of my own learning style, I would have preferred the ability to go to an office or an organization with a brick and mortar location as it would have provided more structure. Due to the loose structure and somewhat self-directed nature of my placement at Limmud, there were times I was unsure of what was needed from me and how to best support the agency. At the beginning of my placement, this was a particular struggle for me. During the first semester, difficulty arose in terms of scheduling time to meet with my supervisor, leading to a late start to my placement. At the same time, I really appreciate the flexibility Limmud allowed me, particularly as this year has been a very busy and demanding both academically and personally.
The Limmud event will be occurring soon very soon. I am excited to see how it turns out after being involved in the planning process and seeing the culmination of the Limmud teams work.
Having the opportunity to be part of the planning process and team meetings provided me an important learning opportunity. I was able to see how different team members approach leadership and observe a diversity of leadership styles. This allowed me to reflect on what I want my own leadership style to be and what qualities I think make a successful leader. I was able to learn about what effective communication and task delegation looks like and the importance of these skills in a leader. I was also able to learn about what qualities make for strong leadership during team meetings.
My DFL internship at Limmud has given me the opportunity to learn about the other Jewish organizations and community leaders in Ottawa. Overall my experience interning at Limmud had been great because it provided an opportunity to further my knowledge and leadership abilities. It has allowed me to develop my capacity for organizing community events and educational initiatives.