Guest Blog: Kirill Tarasenko
Kirill Tarasenko, a sophomore at UCSB majoring in Psychology, speaks today:Today, I am an active member of Santa Barbara’s young Jewish population, largely in thanks to the Forest Foundation. I can now look back and see that by not being actively involved in the Jewish community in the previous years, I really was missing out on some incredible opportunities. After coming to Santa Barbara as a freshman last year, I started to notice Jewish life all around me and wanted to learn more. My connection with the Forest Foundation and UC Santa Barbara Hillel officially began only about a year ago, when I signed up and went on the Birthright Israel trip, an experience that changed my life forever. After the trip, I made the decision to become more involved in the Jewish community and try to give back everything that the community had given to me.
In the last year, I have had the opportunity to table during the summer and meet dozens of incoming freshmen, many of whom I have helped to establish their own identity through Hillel. I have helped put on events for students including a rock climbing and ropes course outing, a late night pancake breakfast just last night, freshman dinners downtown, a huge beach barbecue, a high-school camping trip to El Cap, games and entertainment for kids during High Holy Day ceremonies, and individual coffee dates with students, to name just a few of the things we have recently done. In the near future, the Outreach team is helping fellow “outreacher” Aaron put on a large student foosball tournament and I am chaperoning a large group of freshman on an incredible retreat to Malibu, attending the Spitzer Conference in Washington D.C., and in February I am helping to put on a class on the history of rock & roll music for high school kids. I believe that the services we provide for the community are as exceptionally exciting as they are unique, and I am proud to say that I am part of the Forest Foundation team, a team which has very positively affected my life to date.
posted by forest foundation @ 11:55 AM
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