Submitted by: Jewish Federation of Orange County
Written by: Joey Good
Something shifts in the room when they walk in.
Not because of what they say first. It's before that — when four teenagers set their backpacks down at the front of a classroom and introduce themselves as Jewish students from schools across Orange County. In that moment, before a single question is asked, something changes. The room adjusts.
This is the premise behind Student to Student, and six years into the program, it remains both simple and radical: the most effective tool against antisemitism and ignorance about Jewish life is not a curriculum, a documentary, or a visiting expert. It is a teenager, standing in front of their peers, saying: this is what we look like.
The Problem
Orange County's Jewish community is small — estimates suggest somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 people in a county of over three million. Jewish students in many public schools are a distinct minority, sometimes the only Jewish kid in the room. For many of their classmates, what they know about Jews and Judaism comes from history classes focused on the Holocaust, from social media, or from nothing at all.
That absence of firsthand knowledge creates space for misconceptions to take root. And in recent years, that space has grown more dangerous. Antisemitic incidents have risen sharply across the country, and Orange County is not exempt. Jewish teens describe hearing slurs casually deployed in hallways, seeing symbols they recognize as hateful appear on lockers and bathroom walls, navigating social media landscapes where antisemitism spreads without friction.
Since October 7, 2023, the climate has intensified further. Jewish students have found themselves fielding questions — and accusations — about events unfolding thousands of miles away. The conversations happening in Orange County classrooms have become more charged, more complex, and more necessary.
The Response
Student to Student, a program of the Jewish Federation of Orange County's Rose Project, does not shy away from that complexity. It runs toward it.
The model is straightforward. Jewish high school students from across Orange County — different schools, different denominations, different levels of Jewish engagement — are trained as ambassadors. In teams of three to five, accompanied by a Federation staff member or volunteer, they visit public and private middle and high school classrooms to share their experiences and answer questions. They bring challah. They bring a shofar. They bring themselves.
Presentations cover the range of Jewish life: holidays, traditions, language, family, identity. Ambassadors speak about what it means to be Jewish today — not just historically. And they speak, when the moment calls for it, about antisemitism: what it looks like, how it feels, what it does to a person when it goes unchallenged.
The peer-to-peer model is intentional. A teenager talking to other teenagers carries a different kind of authority than any adult expert. There is no pedestal, no remove. There is just a classmate, telling the truth about their life.
The Impact
In the 2024–2025 school year, Student to Student ambassadors reached more than 6,500 students and teachers through 152 presentations at 35 schools across Orange County, including 11 schools that partnered with the program for the first time. The ambassador cohort grew to 75 teen leaders.
The numbers matter. But so does what happens after.
Independent research found that 83% of teachers strongly agree that Student to Student presentations break down stereotypes and effectively engage their students. Ninety-four percent report that students continue discussing what they learned after the ambassadors leave. Seventy-eight percent believe the program helps counter antisemitism in their schools.
Perhaps most striking: 27% of student participants report that they have interrupted an antisemitic comment since attending a presentation. That is not passive absorption. That is behavioral change.
What Has Been Hard
Student to Student would not be honest if it claimed the work is easy. It is not.
Training teenagers to speak publicly about their identity — including their fears, their experiences of discrimination, their complicated feelings about Israel — requires real support. The program has invested in that support: through a partnership with OpenDor Media, ambassadors participate in leadership workshops designed to help them navigate difficult conversations with clarity and care, rather than defensiveness or deflection.
Since October 7, some classrooms have arrived with more edge than openness. Ambassadors have learned to hold space for questions that have no clean answers, and to stay in the room when the conversation gets uncomfortable. This, too, is part of what Student to Student teaches: that presence is itself an act.
Not every presentation changes every mind. Program staff are honest about that. But the research consistently shows that contact — real, personal, human contact — moves the needle in ways that no curriculum alone can replicate.
Building Forward
In its sixth year, Student to Student is not resting on its results. A new collaboration with OC Hillel connects high school ambassadors with college-age mentors, extending the leadership pipeline beyond graduation. The newly launched Leadership Fellowship, created in partnership with OpenDor Media, offers a six-part cohort experience for ambassadors ready to take on advanced roles — mentoring newer students, leading trainings, going further into the material.
The Legacy Keepers initiative, developed in partnership with Cypress College's Holocaust Education Initiative and Ursula Lowenbach Foster Holocaust Survivor Portrait Gallery, gives ambassadors the opportunity to preserve and present the stories of Holocaust survivors. These students are not just educated about history — they become its carriers.
And the program has begun to honor the educators who make the work possible. The Educator Upstander Award, launched this past year, recognizes teachers who go beyond hosting a presentation to actively champion understanding in their schools. One recipient traveled to the Classroom Without Borders Poland Seminar — an experience that expanded her Holocaust education practice and brought new depth back to her students.
This Is What We Look Like
When Jewish teenagers walk into a classroom in Anaheim, or Mission Viejo, or Garden Grove, they are not walking in as representatives of a historical tragedy or a geopolitical conflict. They are walking in as themselves — complex, ordinary, funny, serious, uncertain, proud. They bring challah and a shofar and their personal stories, and they stand at the front of a room full of strangers and say: here we are.
That act — repeated 152 times last year, at 35 schools, by 75 teenagers — is what philanthropy looks like when it works.
