As our upcoming year of RISE is knee-deep in preparation, we are seeking ambitious, independent, confident, and experienced mentors who possess positive blindness philosophy to serve as core mentors for the 2021-22 academic year! Below, you will find a program description, as well as expectations and responsibilities.

by Dianna Oliveira

Hello everyone, I wanted to provide some important information for the 2021 Washington Seminar. This upcoming Washington Seminar will be a bit different from years past. It will be completely virtual, which has its pros. You won’t need to travel to DC, and you won’t need to worry about frantically making it from one end of the House buildings to the other between appointments. Of course, we will miss seeing our friends and socializing in person. But we hope many more of you will be able to attend this year since you can participate from home. Washington Seminar will be held February 8-11.

Before there was Zoom, the internet, telephones, or even the Postal Service, we needed ways to share messages and keep people connected. In ancient Israel, to mark the calendar, people needed to know when the new year began.
To mark the start of a new year in the fall, every community would build a bonfire on the top of a hill. On the first night of the new year, they would light the bonfire. Others would observe and lite the fire on their own hill. From community to community, each would know the start of a new beginning and celebrate the connection that kept them all together.