The All-Ukrainian Conference of Jewish Teenagers AJT will be held in Ukraine: it will gather about 200 participants

In November 2026, about 200 Jewish teenagers from different cities of Ukraine plan to meet at the Active Jewish Teens Annual Conference 2026 — the annual AJT conference. The organizers have started fundraising for the event: the goal of the public campaign is $35,000, and the total conference budget is stated at $100,000. It’s not just about four days of meetings and activities. According to AJT’s plan, participants should return to their cities with ready plans for social and community initiatives.

Information about the fundraising was received by NANovosti from the project team AJT Ukraine. In an appeal to the editors, the organizers stated that the conference should unite about 200 teenagers from different cities of Ukraine, provide them with practical leadership skills, help develop their own social projects, and strengthen their connection with the Jewish community.

The public campaign page confirms the main parameters: the offline format is designed for four days and three nights, and the program includes training sessions, work of club and inter-club groups, Shabbat, Havdalah, and Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies.

Anton Pshedynsky usually writes for NANovosti about Israel, Ukraine, and the processes that connect the two countries and Jewish communities. In this story, such a perspective is important: not to evaluate AJT’s pedagogical methods — this is beyond the author’s competence — but to check what is behind the current fundraising, compare it with previous conferences, and understand why during the war Ukrainian Jewish youth clubs continue to invest in face-to-face meetings and the preparation of the next generation of community leaders. For this publication, NANovosti compared the materials of the current campaign, JDC data, a separate international collection, and the editorial’s own archive.

For NANovosti — Israel News | Nikk.Agency, this topic is a continuation of observing Jewish life in Ukraine, not a separate charitable announcement. In November 2024, we already reported how the all-Ukrainian AJT conference in Truskavets gathered 180 teenagers from 28 cities of Ukraine and guests from Israel. Now the scale is planned to increase to about 200 teenagers, and the conference model is increasingly built around the question: what will the participant do in their community after returning home.

The Jewish community of Ukraine during Russian aggression

All this is happening against the backdrop of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, which since 2014 and then since February 2022 has changed the life of the entire country — and the Jewish community here does not exist separately from the rest of Ukrainian society. Jews of Ukraine serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine alongside Ukrainians of other nationalities and faiths, defend the country, work as medics, volunteers, collect aid for the military and civilians, support displaced persons, the elderly, and families affected by the attacks.

Jewish organizations and community centers in many cities continue to perform their usual work and take on functions dictated by the war.

They help with evacuation, humanitarian aid, food, medicine, generators, and temporary housing, support children and the elderly. Meanwhile, Shabbats, educational programs, youth clubs, holidays, and work with teenagers continue. That is, the community has not put its life “on pause” until the end of the war.

And this is an important context for the AJT conference.

Teenagers who are supposed to come to it from all over Ukraine are growing up in a country where their older relatives, acquaintances, and representatives of the same Jewish communities are fighting, volunteering, and helping others. They see every day that belonging to the Jewish community and belonging to Ukrainian society do not contradict each other.

For many families, the war has also become a test of the very ability to maintain community ties. Some were forced to move to another city or abroad, some live near the front, some regularly experience air raids and power outages. But clubs continue to operate, teenagers continue to meet, and communities continue to make plans for the future.

That is why the AJT Conference 2026 is not just a few days of leadership training. Against the backdrop of Putin’s aggression, the very possibility of gathering about 200 Jewish teenagers from different cities of Ukraine becomes evidence that the Russian war could not stop Jewish life in the country. Moreover, communities are trying to think not only about how to survive today but also about those who will be responsible for their lives in five, ten, or twenty years.

For NANovosti — Israel News, another thing is fundamentally important here. Jews of Ukraine today are not passive observers of the war and not a separate group existing parallel to Ukrainian society. They, along with the whole country, are going through Russian aggression, serving, volunteering, helping others, and at the same time preserving their own traditions, communities, and connection with world Jewry.

And AJT teenagers are growing up precisely within this reality.

It’s not just about gathering 200 teenagers in one place

AJT — Active Jewish Teens — is not a new project created for the current fundraising. The movement appeared in Ukraine in 2014: JDC indicates that its history began with one youth club in Kharkiv. The project is developed by JDC in partnership with BBYO and has gradually turned into a network uniting Jewish teenagers in several countries. In the current Ukrainian campaign, organizers report more than 700 teenagers aged 13–17 and 18 AJT clubs across Ukraine.

This is where an important distinction of the conference from a regular youth festival appears. Participants are planned to be selected not only by age. Organizers indicate among the criteria regular participation in their AJT club, a recommendation from its leader, demonstrated interest in leadership, and readiness to implement their own initiative in the club or local Jewish community after the conference. Part of the program should be created and conducted by the teenagers themselves.

A total of about 200 teenagers, 20 club directors and leaders, and participation of 20 families are announced. Most teenage places are expected to be subsidized. According to the organizers’ plan, approximately 20–30 participants will be able to pay the full cost, and the family’s financial capabilities should not become the main criterion for access to the program.

The program includes leadership and teamwork training: how to form a team, distribute responsibility, present an idea, negotiate with other people, and bring a project to fruition.

But alongside this remains the Jewish part — joint Shabbat, Havdalah, Bar and Bat Mitzvah. That is, the organizers link leadership training not with abstract “youth success,” but with the future life of specific Jewish clubs and communities.

This is not a new logic for AJT. At the international conference of the movement in Kyiv in 2019, more than 400 Jewish teenagers gathered, and the program included over 150 sessions, Shabbat, Havdalah, volunteer topics, work with Jewish texts, and presentation of their own projects. JDC then directly described AJT as a system in which teenagers gradually take responsibility for the future life of their communities.

Where should the $100,000 go

The total budget of the AJT Ukraine Annual Conference 2026 is stated at $100,000. The funding scheme published by the organizers looks like this: the current campaign should raise $35,000, another $35,000 is planned to be received as matching funding, and the remaining $30,000 from grants and participant contributions. The main campaign page states that after reaching the $35,000 goal, JDC will add the same amount.

As of August 13, the page displayed $4,779 from 211 donors, or 13.7% of the stated goal. This is the current indicator of the public counter, not the final result of the campaign: the collection continues until the November conference.

The organizers also disclose the proposed structure of expenses. The largest part — 40% of the budget — should go to accommodation and meals. Another 10% is allocated for transport and logistics, 15% for renting premises and equipment, 20% for the program, Shabbat, and Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, 10% for materials and merchandise, 5% for invited specialists.

The recipient of charitable funds on the main Ukrainian page is indicated as the charitable foundation OEKC “Beit Ross.” It also states that the foundation is the organizer of the conference and implements educational, charitable, and community programs in Kharkiv and Ukraine. This is an important practical detail: the money is collected not on a personal card of a project participant, but through the specified organizational structure.

There is also a separate campaign for an international audience on GoFundMe.

On August 13, it displayed €1,299 from 19 donations. This page also talks about the need to raise $35,000 for a conference for 200 teenagers, but the matching mechanism is described differently: it states that donations are doubled by JCC Beit Dan in Kharkiv. The main Ukrainian page names JDC. Therefore, NANovosti does not combine the indicators of the two platforms and does not present them as one overall counter: these are different public fundraising channels with different currency displays and matching mechanisms.

This is precisely the case where the boundary between fact and stated goal matters. The $100,000 budget, the plan to raise $35,000, the subsequent doubling of funds, and the percentage distribution of expenses are the financial plan published by the organizers. The actually collected funds are a separate indicator that can be seen on public counters and changes as new donations come in.

What should remain after four days

The most interesting section of the campaign begins not with expenses, but with how AJT proposes to measure the result of the conference.

The organizers have pre-established indicators they expect to achieve after the event. Among them is the desire of 65% of participants to actively continue club life during the next year and an increase in the sense of Jewish identity and belonging among 70% of teenagers. These are still project goals, not proven results of the 2026 conference.

It is also stated that half of the teenage leaders should develop a six-month plan for their own initiative and implement it, 70% of clubs should conduct at least one initiative in the first eight weeks after the conference, and within three months, at least ten inter-club projects are expected to be launched. These indicators will later allow comparing the beautiful description of the campaign with what actually happened after November.

Such an approach has practical meaning. The conference lasts four days, but the main declared value arises only after it. If a participant returned to Kyiv, Dnipro, Poltava, or another city, gathered a team, and launched a working initiative, the effect of the event goes beyond the hotel and weekend program. If this does not happen, the four days remain primarily a meeting and educational event. Therefore, for project evaluation, the number of photos from the conference will be less important than the number of actually continued club and intercity initiatives.

On the fundraising page itself, stories of participants from previous meetings are published.

17-year-old Daniel Tsiporin from Kyiv describes a change in attitude towards the community: it was previously perceived by him primarily as a space organized by adults, and after the conference, the thought of personal responsibility for its future appeared. 16-year-old Arthur Dotsenko talks about a more practical result — understanding how to break down an idea into specific actions and not stop after the initial enthusiasm. Anna Kostenko from Poltava associates her experience with another level — the feeling of Shabbat as part of a living community, not a formal program element.

There is also an independent story from the current fundraising page that shows how such a mechanism looks at the level of one teenager. In February 2026, JDC told about 16-year-old Rodion Pilipsevich from Dnipro. In about a year of participation in AJT, he began to delve deeper into Jewish tradition, learned to play the guitar, became a songleader, started conducting classes, and received the role of a global AJT ambassador. Rodion himself associates participation in the movement with overcoming the fear of public speaking and the desire to create new projects in his community.

His story is important for another reason. Jewish teenage life in Ukraine now exists not outside the war. Rodion describes Dnipro, where there are power outages in winter, and the community center with a generator becomes a place where people can warm up, charge their phones, and be together. Therefore, the word “community” for such teenagers means not only holidays, classes, or family history. In some cities, it is also a working infrastructure of everyday resilience.

Why this story is important to Israel

The Israeli perspective here should not be invented through the obligatory connection of each youth project to state policy. It is much more concrete: part of Jewish life in Ukraine is now being formed by a generation growing up during a full-scale Russian war, but at the same time maintaining a connection with the global Jewish community.

This connection already has a documented history. At the AJT 2024 conference in Truskavets, along with teenagers from 28 Ukrainian cities, there were guests from Israel. In 2019, participants from Israel attended the international AJT conference in Kyiv alongside teenagers from the USA and European countries. However, the published program of the 2026 conference does not yet confirm that the Israeli delegation will come again, so it would be wrong to present the past format as an already approved plan for this year.

For the Israeli audience, something else is more important. Often, the conversation about Jews in Ukraine is reduced either to history — shtetls, the Holocaust, the Soviet period, emigration — or to helping the elderly and vulnerable families during the war. AJT shows another layer: in Ukraine, there is a Jewish teenage environment that tries not only to preserve traditions but also to reproduce its own leadership in the next generation.

And here the current fundraising gains a meaning that is not in the usual formula “$35,000 is needed for the event.” If the declared model works, 200 teenagers should spend four days together and then disperse to cities not only with photos and new acquaintances but with the obligation to do something themselves. How much this transition from conference to real community work will take place can be checked after the event — by the initiatives that the organizers themselves promise to track in the first eight weeks and subsequent months.

That is why NANovosti will continue this story not at the moment of closing the collection.

here is the collection – https://ajt-conference-2026.renderforestsites.com/

The real result of the AJT Conference 2026 will become clear later: how many teenagers actually came, whether subsidized places were provided, whether the stated financial goals were achieved, and most importantly, what projects appeared in the Jewish communities of Ukraine after the participants returned home. In 2024, we recorded the very fact of a large AJT meeting in Truskavets. In 2026, there is an opportunity to check the next stage — whether the annual conference is turning into a sustainable system for preparing those who will be responsible for the life of these communities in a few years.