On June 1st, 2025, we were flooded with nerves and excitement as we officially began our terms as your 81st and 101st international Mazkirim. It feels like just yesterday we were working tirelessly to plan out the year ahead and make our goals come to life. Our midterm reflection is our way to reflect on what we accomplished while eagerly anticipating everything that's yet to come.

After being officially installed at August Execs, we immediately began putting our goals into motion. From the start, we stepped into an active leadership role by helping lead the business meeting, ensuring it was successful. That day, the executive body passed legislation such as the motion to Open the ILTC Coordinator Positions to Any Senior Applicants and the motion to create a Movement Training Resource Hub for AIT/MIT Boot Camps. That moment marked the transition from vision to action and set the tone for how we approached our term moving forward.

BBYO is special because it's not like any other organization. It is teen-led with experiences that Jewish teens are not being offered anywhere else. It was our mission this year to utilize social media in a way that wasn't done before to showcase the magic of BBYO across the globe. On June 1st, we prioritized investing our time into improving social media presence across the order. 

We decided to launch our very own social media push weeks prior to movement initiatives to create momentum and hype. During the fall, we curated our summer push week to elevate the awareness of every summer program that BBYO offers and increase membership. We saw the success of our coordinated social media push for Summer, so we did the same technique for Giving BBYO Day and Global Shabbat. Through coordinated posts, personal stories, and constant posting, we were able to increase registration for summer programs, raise more money, and highlight the importance of Global Shabbat. We are eager to continue with these social media push weeks prior to IC, J-Serve, and Founders Fest!

Over the past seven months, we have had the incredible opportunity to work closely with our KOMS counterparts to build a strong and connected network. Through our initial network calls and 1:1 calls, we focused on equipping our counterparts with skills and techniques to grow and strengthen their regions’ social media platforms. Our goal was to help our counterparts display their region’s identity and special moments to spread Jewish Joy across the internet. We proudly saw our KOMS network excel at promoting their conventions and events in new ways through hype videos, skits, and so many TikToks. Regions across the order are increasing their following and presence every day. Also, we are working with our network to build relationships in their region and chapters with more Jewish institutions in their respective communities. In the fall, we have focused on brainstorming and collecting contacts, and now we plan to coach our counterparts with moving forward on these awesome collaborations! By creating space for idea-sharing, support, and accountability, we strengthened not only individual leaders but the network as a whole. 

In the coming months, we want to see a huge push in the branding of chapter accounts. We want to see chapters more aligned to their regions and the movement, to focus on showing their chapter’s personality in their social media posts, and to highlight more of their community with more pictures of teens instead of just flyers for their upcoming events. Some chapters already do an amazing job with this, but we want to see this happen across the movement, and by mobilizing our mazkirim network, we can make this happen. 

We had the privilege of leading the incredible press corps team. We read through hundreds and hundreds of applications at the beginning of the year and were able to build the biggest press corps yet of dedicated and passionate teens from across the world. Press corps teens dominated BBYO’s social media presence, redefining what our online presence can look like. By keeping up with trends, we were able to hit 10,000 followers on TikTok and go viral multiple times. Our press corps teens worked hard on writing detailed articles, posting Snapchat spotlights, creating perfectly curated Spotify playlists, and constantly posting on TikTok. Their leadership not only elevated our online presence but also proved the power of empowering teens to shape the narrative of their own movement. 

We have had the opportunity to lead two other ILN initiatives: the On-Demand Club Coordinators and the Global Democracy Coordinators. We picked teens who showcased clear leadership and creativity in their applications. The On-Demand Club Coordinators have been working hard to assist and advise club leaders, and their success is clear. There is a record number of 48 clubs, meaning that every teen can find a place where they belong. 

At the same time, we have met with our Global Democracy Coordinators to brainstorm meaningful ways to engage teens in civic leadership and global dialogue, and in the months ahead, we are eager to turn those ideas into action. This includes creating accessible, movement-wide opportunities, such as a Parli Pro 101 call open to all teens to educate about governance, as well as other workshops to get teens more involved in our movement’s democracy, so everyone can have a voice in AZA and BBG.

Throughout our term, we have worked with the other summer coordinators to recruit teens for ILTC. We are extremely proud to say that we have surpassed our goals for recruitment in the early bird phase, and are now looking forward to selling out before IC.  

As we move into the second half of our term, we are excited to continue building on the momentum we have created and to bring new ideas to life across the Movement. We are especially looking forward to deepening our work with sibling communities through the BBYO x Maccabi Tzair Initiative, strengthening connections and shared experiences from around the world with our sister movement in Israel. 

We are looking forward to working with the Press Corps team to improve the Shofar and elevate awareness in the second half of our term. Our journalism hubs are full of thoughtful stories and opinions that deserve a bigger audience. Our goal is to use our platform on social media and our network to increase the number of viewers per article and implement new formats for article topics. 

Looking back on the first half of the term, we feel all the emotions, but specifically gratitude. Serving as your international Mazkirim has allowed us to learn, grow, and connect with teens, all of you, from around the world. We have loved every minute of this journey so far, and we cannot wait to bring on our energy and excitement to the second half of our term! 

Your International Mazkirim, Lucy and Charlie