JACOB COLKER

We recently asked Mikva Challenge Alumnus, Jacob Colker, to share a few things about his experiences at Mikva Challenge, and here is what he had to say:

Most of us look back at our high school years with a variety of emotions and memories. We see smiles, heartbreak, success and failure. High school is a time to experience our first kiss, to mature our social skills, to learn how to be responsible, to acclimate ourselves to the pressure of deadlines, and most importantly -- to discover who we are and what we want to do with our careers.

In early 2000, I was a young, somewhat apathetic, 17-year old goofball, with a passion for life and a hunger to change the world -- but a bit lost in direction. One day, a representative from Mikva Challenge came and spoke to one of my classes about the importance of civic engagement. My name was put into a hat (Mikva had funding, but not nearly enough to take the entire class) and as luck would have it, I got picked. The next thing I know, I'm on a bus in Iowa working for Senator Bill Bradley (running for president), and assisting his bid to win the Iowa caucuses. We toured the state, riding in his motorcade, going from one rally to the next -- clawing our way through droves of news media cameras -- many times a day over the course of a long weekend. Mikva Challenge paid for the buses, the hotels, and our meals. It was a real eye-opener to see the political process (especially for the office of U.S. President) up-close and personal, and it had a big impact on me.

Following my experience with Mikva Challenge, I worked for an aldermanic race, a state senate race, and a few local nonprofits. After high school, I attended Columbia College to learn news and media management, while staying involved politically. I graduated in 2004, and started a career in politics -- working for state and federal candidates in California, Illinois, and Maryland. In 2006, I was the first field director in the country to use Facebook to win a statewide election -- and was lucky enough to be featured on the front page of the Chicago Tribune (Web's role widens in campaigns. 10/9/06). From

2007 through mid-2008, I had the opportunity to coordinate the International Campaign for Tibet's worldwide campaign to raise awareness of human rights abuses in Tibet, in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while attending grad school at night at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. And lastly, in the fall of 2008, I co-founded a civic engagement and micro-volunteering company called The Extraordinaries, where we help public service organizations to better engage their communities through crowdsourcing technology (http://www.BeExtra.org). So far, I have been fortunate to live a life of public service, and it has been quite rewarding.

There's no question about the fact that Mikva Challenge provides important opportunities to high school students. But what's really key, is that those opportunities are presented at one of the most *critical* crossroads in the course of a young adolescent's life. The decisions we make during those precious few high school years have a domino effect on the rest of our lives -- the college we get into, the choice of academic focus, our apathy to the world around us, and the doors of opportunity that open or close.

The experience I had at Mikva Challenge struck a chord with me, and it opened my eyes at a critical moment in my life, when I still had time to think and act. I made adjustments that put me on quite a different trajectory, and I'm lucky to have had that chance. I'm thankful for my own time at Mikva, and even more so, I'm excited to watch Mikva grow and continue to inspire our future leaders. After all, it *is* possible for a Chicagoan to become president, and I have no doubt that the more kids that Mikva can reach -- the more we will fuel the fires of change with newly self-aware, impassioned, and determined young people. It has certainly been the case for me.

At Mikva Challenge, our mission is to train life-long civic leaders, and our alumni, like Jacob, and students affirm our success in getting young people to become today and tomorrow's leaders.