- Jews for New Orleans » Laura Taishoff

Sharing a meal

Corps members live communally in their Jefferson Avenue house uptown

Shine

Celebrating Sukkot

In October 2008, Corps members hosted a potluck under the backyard sukkah

Churches

Resurrection After Exoneration

Ora Nitkin-Kaner, 08-09, still works at RAE after finishing the AVODAH program

Civic Involvement

Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development

Corps members visited this Lower 9th Ward organization during Orientation

Action

Learning about Bayou Bienvenue

Alum David Eber teaches the group about deforestation in the cypress swamps

Churches

Highlighting the Jewish Community's Involvement in Rebuilding New Orleans

This site is hosted by AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, which launched its New Orleans program in the fall of 2008. AVODAH engages young people in direct work on the causes and effects of poverty in the United States. This work partners Corps members with service providers and residents in low income communities and equips our Corps members and alumni to emerge as lifelong agents for social change, whose work for justice is rooted in and nourished by Jewish values.

Author Archive

Laura Taishoff
Laura Taishoff, from Katonah, NY, studied English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She studied abroad in both Mexico and Italy, and participated in a Birthright trip to Israel with the campus Hillel. As an Honors Fellow, Laura mentored incoming freshmen on issues of civil rights and social injustice. She also served as co-captain of the women’s lacrosse club and co-editor of The Voice, a student-run Jewish cultural magazine, and also worked as a conversational English tutor. At Juvenile Regional Services, Laura does post-dispositional advocacy, both with juveniles on probation and juveniles in secure care. By getting school records and meeting with children and their families, Laura helps the juveniles to reach academic success. Laura builds relationships with the juveniles and help find programs(educational, vocational) in the hopes of reducing the recitivism rate. Laura also travels to visit our clients in secure care to communicate with them and their case managers about what services are being provided to the juveniles.

Navigating the red tape of the school to prison pipeline

Jan 22nd, 2010 by Laura Taishoff | 1

One of the biggest aspects of my job as a Youth Advocate at Juvenile Regional Services is checking in with the kids who are in the post dispositional phase. This means that the juvenile has gone through the sentencing process and is either on probation or in secure care. The majority of juveniles that I [...]

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Waking up some butterflies, laying others to rest

Sep 21st, 2009 by Laura Taishoff | 1

Most of my summer, prior to my arrival in New Orleans, was dominated by that all too familiar feeling of butterflies fluttering around my in my stomach. Upon leaving New York to go to Wisconsin for college, those trusty butterflies were alive and well. Any time I sat at the airport, waiting to embark [...]

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