SDJA Student Wins Prestigious Leadership Award

San Diego, CA – December 1, 2014 – San Diego Jewish Academy (SDJA) upper school student Lily Greenberg Call was named one of three winners of the prestigious Peter Chortek Leadership Award.

The award honors San Diego Jewish high school students who demonstrate excellence in community service, leadership and philanthropy, and highlights those who inspire others through a volunteer service project that displays their initiative, passion and positive spirit.

Ms. Greenberg Call’s project is The Advocacy Committee - a place for teen girls to learn about issues affecting women and girls, locally, nationally, and internationally, and take action to pass legislation related to those issues.

“I started it when I joined Girls Give Back as a freshman (GGB is a leadership program for girls at Jewish Family Services),” said Greenberg Call. “I’ve always been passionate about politics but I noticed that most of my peers weren’t at all interested just because they didn’t think it was relevant to them, so I wanted to change that.”

The Advocacy Committee has learned about a plethora of issues and has worked with media representation and the Equal Rights Amendment.

“We created a campaign to pass the healthy Media for Youth Act, an act that aimed to create a National Task Force on Women and Girls in the Media and create standards for magazines, films, and other forms of media,” said Greenberg Call. “We sent over 350 postcards to 25 representatives urging them to support the bill, met with Senator Feinstein’s reps and secured her support, and held media decoding workshops for girls groups across San Diego.”

Last year, The Advocacy Committee decided to focus their efforts on the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA is an amendment to the Constitution that literally says “men and women will be guaranteed equality under the law”. In 2014, there still isn’t anything in the constitution that says that. The ERA was almost ratified in the 1960s but was just three states short of ratification, and the movement has started again because the deadline for ratification is 2015. That means that if 2015 passes and those three states haven’t ratified the amendment, all the previous votes will be null and void and the process will have to start from the beginning with every state. Because of this, The Advocacy Committee partnered with United 4 Equality, a DC-based organization founded by the woman who wrote HR 113, the bill that is currently in the house and would extend the deadline for ratifying those three states.

“We held a phone banking party and we’re about to secure support for the bill from five San Diego representatives, and then met with Rep Susan Davis herself to ask her to cosponsor and facilitate the passage of the bill which she agreed to do,” said Greenberg Call. “We wrote articles about why the amendment is important and relevant, and had these published on various websites. In the spring, I created a national grassroots network of high school students who are spreading awareness via social media.”

The Advocacy Committee isn’t just a temporary project Greenberg Call created for a high school assignment or to accrue volunteer hours. It appears to be a calling for Ms. Greenberg Call.

“Working in advocacy, both for women in the Advocacy Committee and through my work with AIPAC, has been the most rewarding experience of my life,” said Greenberg Call. “It’s grueling, it’s frustrating, and it tests you, but it teaches you about how passionate you can be about something. And it makes lasting change. Advocacy is more than a temporary bandage. It aims to fix the issues in society by fixing the framework of the law, and I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

The Peter Chortek Leadership Award was created to foster Jewish communal involvement by rewarding Jewish teens who are practicing tikkun olam - repairing the world.

In addition to a cash award, Ms. Greenberg Call was also award $1,800 to donate to the charity of her choice.

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About SDJA:
A pluralistic preschool –12th grade school serving the Jewish community, our mission is to further academic excellence, social responsibility, and active Jewish living.
At San Diego Jewish Academy we:
• Inspire our students to embrace creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking in their learning
• Instill in our students a deep understanding and respect for the values and insights of Jewish tradition and a love of Israel that will lead them to live lives of Jewish meaning
• Prepare our graduates to be leaders of integrity, social responsibility, and architects of change

For more information about San Diego Jewish Academy, visit www.sdja.com