2024-2025 Cohort
2023-2024 Cohort
2024 – 2025 Cohort
Micah P. – Check Mates
9th Grade, Palos Verdes High School
Check Mates is an organization aimed at creating multigenerational bonds to strengthen communities through the game of chess. By bringing younger and older players together in friendly matches that encourage learning and critical thinking, we hope to develop connections that support participation and investment in local communities.
Eli T. – Mighty Mezuzahs
10th Grade, Santa Monica High School
My name is Eli Tobel, and I’m proud to be Jewish. After October 7th, I read about a lot of people taking off their Stars of David and taking down their mezuzahs. I started making custom mezuzahs in my home garage to play a small part in reversing that trend. – I hope this makes other people feel safe, confident, and proud – despite all the antisemitism around us.
All profits from sales are directly donated to the Israel Trauma Coalition, which helps treat trauma and build emergency preparedness in Israel and around the world.
Maddie S. & Kate S. – The Magic of Me
11th Grade, Windward School
We created, designed, and distributed a bilingual activity for children in the foster care system titled The Magic of Me. Our book aims to give foster care children an opportunity to practice creativity and movement and provide them with an outlet to express themselves.
Adrian E. & Yonatan Z. – SafeJew
10th Grade, LACES
SafeJew is a teen-led initiative empowering the Jewish community in Los Angeles and beyond. Originally created to track antisemitic incidents, it has grown into a platform for advocacy, education, and support. By mapping hate crimes, providing safety resources, and encouraging reporting, SafeJew fosters solidarity and Jewish pride through the power of technology and data.
Ronen H. – FinTeens
11th grade, Palisades Charter High School
FinTeens is a financial literacy workshop focused on teaching the basics of personal finance. The program is split into three parts (budgeting, saving, and investing) and is designed to help individuals understand how to manage money and build financial confidence.
Liam Sauer – Ahavta Lreicha
11th Grade, Santa Monica High School
Throughout my life, I have consistently seen the way my community divided itself into little boxes and subsets. I feel like growing up with a lot of different Jewish perspectives, I always fell in the intersection of these groups. The main thing I realized is that instead of trying to understand each other, these groups were zoning in on their differences. In a time where antisemitism has become such an issue, I realized something had to be done. We needed to bridge the divide between labels like Reformed, Conservative, Orthodox , Sephardi, and Ashkenazi, and make a space where we could all be together, without judgment, uniting as Jews. So I created, Ahavta Lreicha, my seminar where I organized youth leaders in a 4-hour Socratic style open dialogue, debating and discussing our views on religion and empathy, while also educating them on how to better understand their fellow Jews. This project was so important to me, as I really believed it inspired many other Jewish leaders within LA to adopt this attitude of welcoming and acceptance.
Sadie G. & Rana K. – Brighter Together
11th Grade, Santa Monica High School
Brighter Together is a children’s book written by two high school students, one Jewish and one Muslim, who came together to promote empathy, friendship, and interfaith understanding.
The story follows a Jewish Star and a Muslim Crescent who meet at Sky School. As they learn about each other’s holidays, traditions, and beliefs, they discover how much they have in common, and how their differences make the sky brighter for everyone.
Through imaginative storytelling and meaningful dialogue, Brighter Together encourages young readers, families, and educators to explore themes of identity, connection, and respect across faiths. It’s a celebration of what’s possible when we listen, learn, and grow together.
2023 – 2024 Cohort
Aaron M. – Care For Chemo Kids
11th Grade, DeToledo High School
Care For Chemo Kids provides resources for teenagers experiencing cancer treatment that allow them to share their journey. There are so many resources created for pediatric cancer patients. However, most of them are targeted towards younger age groups, leaving out teens, who often find themselves the uncharted territory of no longer benefiting from activities meant for little kids, and unable to benefit from resources created for adults. Care For Chemo Kids seeks to bridge that gap by providing resources that remind teens that they are still kids at heart, while catering to their specific age group. The carefree attributes in teens will help them through treatment. Laughing about the small things and focusing on the bright parts of their lives is essential in making chemo manageable. Through care packages, online resources, and community-building opportunities, Care For Chemo Kids hopes to make the lives of teens going through cancer treatment just a little bit brighter.
Leah W. – Stories of Allyship in Action
11th Grade, Windward High School
I was excited to use my Teen Innovation Grant to promote allyship among people of different religions and races, so I created Stories of Allyship in Action: an 80-foot-long “traveling exhibit” that featured 18 true, inspiring allyship stories that I researched. Each story (some historic, some current) featured people or groups stepping up to support people of different religions or races. These story summaries became the focal point of my display boards, along with related photos to bring the stories to life and an inspiring quote from the story’s featured ally.
Since completing Stories of Allyship in Action last year, the exhibit has been displayed at local high schools, the Los Angeles Public Library, and will continue to circulate to other Los Angeles locations. I have also turned the stories into a printed photo/story book that can be distributed to places unable to accommodate a large exhibit. My TIG project also led me to be invited to speak about allyship at a diversity event. I was so proud to be able to talk about my work in this area thanks to the TIG grant.
At a time when society often feels so divided and hate is so rampant, I hope projects like Stories of Allyship in Action will inspire others to step up as allies to those of different religions and races. I am so grateful to the Teen Innovation Grant program for helping me bring this meaningful project to life!
Benjamin R. – Hope, Soap, and Blankets
11th Grade, South Pasadena High School
In my sophomore year at South Pasadena High School, I co-founded the Jewish Mitzvah Club with three of my friends. The next year, I applied for JFEDLA’s Julie Beren Platt Teen Innovation Grant, which I was grateful to receive. I created Hope, Soap, and Blankets, a project to help people experiencing homelessness by providing essential hygiene items and blankets. It was exciting to be a part of a cohort of grant recipients, each doing their own engaging projects. Through this experience and working with Jordan Bielsky, a mentor from JFEDLA, I better understood the value of compassion and that part of being Jewish is helping those in need. It was also meaningful to involve my school’s Jewish Mitzvah Club members in this project (pictured below) because I wanted my community to participate in this work. I reached out to Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater of Friends In Deed to donate the Hope, Soap, and Blanket bags. For our mitzvah, we were awarded our school’s Club Community Impact Award.
Since the project
I am excited to study Communications and play baseball at Oberlin College this fall.
Hope, Soap, and Blankets was a very meaningful project that I wrote about in my college and scholarship applications.
