NERUSY

1. Executive Board Retreat – This annual retreat, attended by all seven executive board members, is an important and fun way to kick off the year with bonding activities, leadership exercises, calendar planning, and 10-20 minute long presentations by each Vice President.
2. TRUSY Elections and Banquet – Similar to the NERUSY banquet at Spring Convention, TRUSY has annual elections, followed by a banquet, during which we celebrate the year, say goodbye to seniors, thank outgoing board members, install new board members, and watch a slide show of photos from all of our events that year.
3. Learn to Lead – With the Learn to Lead program, USYers earned TRUSY Treasure points (see below) for leading different services and blessings, alone, in pairs or threes, encouraging USYers to lead who were previously scared and reluctant to do so.
4. TRUSY Treasures – TRUSY Treasures is an incentive program in which you get between 5 to 50 points (and prizes at the end of the year) for various things, like leading a service, bringing a friend who joins the chapter, attending Shabbat services, and more.
5. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Teen Services – Our High Holiday services and activities, all led by USYers, took place in our beautiful new youth lounge, were attended by 40 USYers, and included davening, a discussion and a "Debate Midrash" on various ethical dilemmas, and a delicious Rosh Hashanah Kiddush.
6. USY Shabbatot – Our Friday night USY Shabbatot and Saturday morning teen services, led by USYers, include dinner or Kiddush/lunch, activities, discussion and a lot of ruach, and are held on the same weekend, with a theme (like Sukkot, SA/TO or Israel) giving them more of a shabbaton feel.
7. Purim – USY leads the Purim celebrations for Temple Reyim, including making Hamentashen for the Megillah reading, providing the entertainment before the Megillah reading (a performance by the senior members of the Gann Academy Juggling Club, including two of our USYers), leading songs between Megillah chapters and hosting the Post Purim Party for USYers in our youth lounge.
8. Israel Lounge Night – We framed our first ever Israel lounge night as a trip to Israel, complete with passports, stops and activities in Jerusalem, Tzfat, Tel Aviv, Ein Gedi and Haifa, and Israeli food and music.
9. Israel themed USY Shabbat – At our Israel Kabbalat Shabbat, we ate delicious Falafel and shwarma for dinner, followed by a homemade game of Israel Taboo, and a discussion of abstract drawings of Israel.
10. SA/TO Sunday – After lunch and a text study on homelessness (trip one) and poverty (trip two), we traveled to Cambridge to help serve dinner to the needy and stay after to wash dishes and clean up (trip one), and to Cradles to Crayons, a collection and distribution agency for toys, games, school supplies, etc. to homeless and underprivileged children, to help sort clothes.
11. Casino Night – The entire NERUSY region was invited to our inter-chapter event, paying $10 per USYer to play games all night, win prizes, and participate in small SA/TO projects like letter-writing, sorting gifts for Cradles to Crayons (see above), and buying puppy-grams for the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind.
12. Chaverim G'dolim – In our own version of a traditional Big Brother/Big Sister program, a strong group of senior USYers all got paired up with 2-3 Kadimaniks, meeting as a group twice during the year, for ice cream and games after a Kadima event, and for ice skating at Frog Pond.
13. Youth Lounge and Lounge Nights – In our second year with our beautiful new youth lounge, we increased attendance by changing the lounge nights from a time to just hang out, play video games and eat to a time to do all that with added activities on a theme, like Israel or SA/TO.
14. Laser Tag – We did this inter-chapter event with both Sharon and Lexington USY (two other strong chapters) to help our members make friends in the region and be more excited about Regional events.
15. International Convention Pre-Convention – Seaboard's Pre-Convention, which we hosted and was chaired by two of our USYers, included touring of Salem, Faneuil Hall, and Shear Madness, a baseball day, with a tour of Fenway and a private viewing of Fever Pitch, and ended with a beautiful Shabbat, with icebreakers and games created and led by the Co-Chairs and the Executive Board, and services led by Seaboard and TRUSY members.

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