CHAI-LIGHTS OF THE YEAR 5776

By: The NFTY-STR Communications Vice President Network

SNFTY We had a cupcake war, where we were given a theme and

had to create a cupcake design. It was really fun and everyone was able to see each other’s creative sides. Our largest event this year was Sushi in the Sukkah, where we

made our own rolls underneath the stars with 22 participants. All in all, we are working towards building our Junior youth

group and keep them coming back!

BESTY We just had a dinner and bowling night with our JYG to

help welcome the new members. We also hosted a Friday Night service on March 25th. Two of our members

(Andrew Pelk and Rebecca Smith) spoke about their Mitzvah Corps trips this past summer.

BAFTY This year has been such a success! We raised around

$7,000 for Camp Jenny with our annual Jog for Jenny 5K! We also went to Islands of Adventure, did an IKEA

Scavenger Hunt, and now have a BAFTY mascot, Ferb the flamingo!

SchZFTY Back in January, we hosted an incredibly successful event

“A night on the town, with a twist”. We traveled on our favorite yellow school bus to the local thrift store. Upon

arrival, SchZFTYites were randomly divided into teams and assigned themes. The mission was to purchase items in the

store best suited to each theme, ranging from Prom Night to 90’s Attire. Everyone had such a great time!

TOUCHY Our program, Cake Wars, was one of our biggest

successes because we had new members attend this event and bring their friends to the next program. It

increased our membership and increased our leadership involvement. The program was also really fun and gave us some new ideas as to how to incorporate

more hands-on, interactive programs in the future.

BOOTY One of our very first events of the year was Mystery

Night. First we attended Friday Night Services and then had dinner at BJ’s. We ended our night at QQuest Escape Games, where we were timed to escape a

room full of clues. This challenge helped strengthen our teamwork and communication skills. It was a fun team

building exercise where we successfully solved a mystery! We are also looking forward to planning and executing our annual Camp Jenny fundraiser, Trivia

Night. Overall we have had a successful year with many new programs!

SHFTY We have continued planning fun and engaging

programs for all of our members and are working on bringing in new members. We planned and executed the

Pillow Fort event to help donate sheets to Camp Jenny. Also we are preparing for our end of year lock-in which is a trip to Disney to close out the year strong, the future is

looking very bright!

PARTY Our youth group had many successes this past year

including, this past weekend. Beginning on Friday, March 25th, 71 CITs, counselors, and campers from grades PreK-5 arrived at the temple for the excitement and fun that is the annual Camp Messibah overnight shabbaton, where

Congregation Kol Tikvah is transformed into a Jewish sleep away camp for a night. Staffed by the CITs, the campers are grouped by their grade level for a night

complete with Shabbat services, animals shows, arts and crafts, dance parties, and more! We can’t wait to see

what’s in store for Camp Messibah next year!

BOFTY This year, we implemented our first “Camp Jenny Day

Camp”, where K-5th graders spent the day participating in many activities, with all funds benefiting Camp Jenny.

BOFTYites led the programs and games, acting as counselors and specialists. We had a fun science lab,

relay races, soccer, cheerleading, shirt decorating, and lots of fun! We can’t wait to do it again next year!

JUiCY We hosted a Palm Beach sub-regional lock-in. It was a

space themed lock-in, with NFTY style mixers and programs. A great time was had by all 50 plus

participants, some people were even pied in the face! JUiCY is so excited for the year to come!

JAMTY So far this year, we have had a lot of opportunities with volunteering and fun programming! Our most successful event of the year was our Walking Shabbat program. On

a Friday night, JAMTY-ites met up at a neighborhood where a few TYG members lived, and went to the

different houses of each member for a meal & prayer. The JAMTY board successfully communicated together

throughout the year and organized many events!

GORFTY This year we have grown our TYG from 5 to about 15

members. Due to the major growth we were able to host Fall Kallah with help from the rest of our temple. We have

been having engaging and fun monthly events so attendance is always increasing. We hope to keep

growing in the Orlando area and make a bigger impact in attendance at regional events.

SAFETY This year, we hosted an event at a local ice skating rink and invited the middle schoolers and had a great time!

We also had activities such as a secret gift exchange and donating food and toiletries to the homeless. All of our kind efforts landed us a picture in the local newspaper!

BITTY Throughout this past year BITTY has seen many successes

with both our growth and our activities under the leadership of our BITTY board. In our temple’s 30-year

history, this was the first year we started Jr., Mini, and Lil BITTY for younger kids to get involved. We continued our successful monthly hangout nights and participated in two sub-regional events. On a regional level, we were very excited to step up and volunteer to host Spring

Kallah in partnership with TASTY for our first Camp Kallah in over 15 years. We are looking forward to our end of the

year event, a mystery bus ride with SchZFTY.

KAFTY Our Freshmen Kidnap program was most successful and memorable. The upperclassmen started off the day by going to each freshman’s house, waking them up, and

telling them to get dressed and pack a quick bag. Next, we traveled to Blaze Pizza for lunch, followed by a trip to

the Melting Pot for dessert. Our activities involved canoeing, an improve show, and ChillN for ice cream.

The event was a great way for the freshmen to feel comfortable and get them excited to start the year.

JTY One event that we enjoyed was the mock “Chopped

Event”. Everyone was split up into teams, and they were asked to grab ingredients from a table. Before grabbing

an ingredient, they had to answer a questions relevant to what we were learning about. It made the activity not

only fun, but also educational. We look forward to having more engaging programs next year also!

BESHTY Our most successful event this year was our Ice Skating

event. Not only did our participants enjoy a nice Saturday night out on the ice, but also they bonded no matter which grade they were in. With over 40 people,

we couldn't have thought of a better way to start off the fall season. We can't wait for more events like this one!

We also had a mini retreat filled with tie dye, color wars, and s’mores for younger kids.

BISY BISY has come such a long way since the beginning of the year. Our best event/program is hopefully going to be our

upcoming retreat for BISY and other grades at our temple. The board is putting together the whole event and we are hoping

that this will be the best event we have had this year.

BIFTY We had an amazing event where we hosted a NFTY style

service, led by the BIFTY Board. The service was followed by NFTY mixers that congregants of all ages participated in.

After the mixers, the board talked to the congregants about housing for LLTI 2k16. They also discussed about donating to Camp Jenny. We are excited to further

strengthen our relationship with our temple!

TIFTY This year, TIFTY has doubled our membership and we now

have monthly events. On February 26, TIFTY successfully hosted a special needs Shabbat service aimed towards people with physical and mental disabilities. During that

service, we achieved our goals of bringing awareness about the challenges people with disabilities face, as well as the

goal of having disabled people themselves show up for the service. TIFTY has had a great year.

SaSSY For a little town in Vero Beach, Florida on the East coast we sure do have big feet! To start off our new youth group, our

proud mascot is SaSSY the Sasquatch. This year we have kick-started our board, held a calendar of well attended

events, and brought our first high schoolers to regional events. We have raised over $1,000 for Camp Jenny and

hope to continue our social action projects. It is very exciting to be active members in the NFTY-STR community.

TiBTofty For the past 2 months, TiBTofty has been joining our

congregation for Friday Night Shabbat Service, after services TiBTofty holds a movie night. This movie night is a fundraiser for

Camp Jenny and is also a fun activity for us to bond.

TaSTY This year, TaSTY had its two biggest events ever! At our

Lock-In, we introduced our middle schoolers to the sub-region, collected blankets for Camp Jenny, and

watched Disney movies into the wee hours of the morning. We also had a NFTY-style Shabbat service,

where we transformed our temple into summer camp and led fun, new versions of all of the prayers.

BEEFY This year our annual BEEFY Café fundraiser at our Temple

Art Fest was a great time had by all and greatly exceeded our fundraising goals. We also put together an amazing

service focusing on ocean conservation. Our songleader, Cailey, and our RCVP, Sara, had our entire congregation

engaged in singing along. Outside of just our youth group, our subregion has been successful at having fun together!

SOLTY From this time last year up until now, SOLTY went from being an idea to being ideal. We've accomplished so much, we were thrilled to have sent 8 kids to this past

Spring Kallah, it was fantastic. But the biggest accomplishment SOLTY has had and will ever have was

finding our youth advisor Chen. We can't wait to see where she will help guide us next year!

STARY This year, STARY established a new program within our youth group, Club 5. Club 5 was exclusive to the 5th

graders in our religious school and they had separate programs from STARY and STARY Jr. to get them excited about joining STARY Jr. next year. The Club 5 lock-in was

an instant success with many new friendships made.

DAFTY On April 3rd, our youth group (DAFTY) ran a food booth

at the Jewish Heritage Festival in the Daytona Beach area. We received a lot of compliments on the

dedication and enthusiasm of our Temple youth. It was a long, hard day. Exhausting, but fun, and lucrative! It

will help pay for our next trip to NFTY-STR Kallah! We hope to have a great turnout next year at events!

Website: southerntropical.nfty.org

NFTY STR | Southern Tropical Region

NFTY_STR / STR_TVP / STR_POSITION

NFTY_STR nfty.str

Thank you to the youth groups that contributed!

BaHTY The Temple Beit HaYam (BaHTY) teens had a great year, filled with travel, social and fundraising programs, and

events related to holidays and Shabbat. Our BaHTY board worked hard and made our TBH community very

proud. Our board and many members of our TYG participated in NFTY-STR Kallot and Temple events. We

led our own Shabbat service and raised money for Camp Jenny. We made memories and created

friendships that will last a lifetime. BaHTY is looking forward to another great year!