Syosset resident Miriam Rubin gave up her summer vacation to volunteer for the New York City based American Jewish Society for Service, now in its 51st year. The group teamed-up with Habitat for Humanity and built homes for the poor and renovated a shelter for the homeless in Michigan.

Rubin, a student at Syosset High School, returned from the AJSS project in Escanaba, Michigan on August 10. She spent the last month-and-a-half giving her labor, exchanging aches, pains and the occasional minor injury for the gift of a good conscience and the knowledge that she has made a meaningful difference in the lives of Americans not as fortunate as she is.

Although the group of 16 students had to put in a full workweek, the weekends were free and activities were planned. "We went white water rafting and did some touring also," said Rubin. "It was a lot of fun."

The workweek consisted of scraping and painting a homeless shelter and helping to build low-income housing on an Indian reservation. "We built two houses from the ground up and we did shingling and laid out the walls and the roofing," said Rubin. "We also shingled another house and poured the foundation for another house."

Rubin's group worked at three sites, but mostly work on the Hannibal site on the Indian reservation. At the Escanaba site, the group sided houses, installed windows and doors and shingled roofs and at the last site they pulled weeds. "I had to learn everything because I had no idea about construction," said Rubin. "I came back with a lot of skills."

In order to qualify for this project, students must have finished 10th grade and not have participated before. "I would love to do this again, but you are not allowed so others can enjoy the experience, said Rubin.

Rubin is happy with her decision to skip camp this summer and volunteer her time. "I met amazing people and it is an amazing experience," said Rubin. "There were 10 people from the New York area out of the 16 in my group, but there were also people from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and California too. We are like family now."

Since 1950, the AJSS has been conducting voluntary work camps in disadvantaged communities throughout the U.S. According to AJSS founder and Chairman Henry Kohn, the organization's goal is to provide the mechanism whereby Jewish high school juniors and seniors could serve on a nonsectarian basis those in our society who are deprived. For more than five decades, in more than 124 projects in 46 states, some 2,000 AJSS volunteers have built single family homes, schools, barns, renovated recreational facilities, community centers and much more.