By Jonathan “Skippy” Neff, NFTY-PAR PVP

Two weeks ago, over 850 Reform Jewish teens met for NFTY Convention in Los Angeles, California. As much as it was a weekend filled with fun and ruach, we also had the chance to participate in some inspiring social action projects during our offsite trips before our “grand rendezvous” in Universal Studios.

I wanted to take a minute to talk about my offsite project, Jewcer, as I think it’s a powerful tool for Jews in this technological age we all live in. Jewcer is a “crowdfunding” platform, much like Kickstarter, where you pitch your business idea or project to the world wide web and offer different levels of incentives for potential investors, big or small. But here’s the twist: Jewcer was made by Jews for Jews. Of a crowdfunding market of over one hundred separate platform, Jewcer is the only one that targets Jews. You can sign up very easily on their website, create a goal for your project or business, give it a tagline, and watch the cash roll in. Well, that’s not entirely true. You place rewards for your investors to provide incentive to invest.

In our group of about 30 NFTYites, we gathered in a local synagogue in Los Angeles and heard from the three amazing, inspiring co-founders of Jewcer, and got a chance to brainstorm our own projects to put on the website. Look out soon for the mobile app “Jew Near U”, which my group and I created during our brainstorming session. Jew Near U encompasses all the great features of JDate, Facebook, Twitter, and Grindr to find Jews near you sorted by a number of options including age, sex, interests, and much, much more!

I highly encourage all that had the pleasure of reading this NFTY blog post to travel on over to http://www.jewcer.com/ to check out all the cool stuff Jewcer has got going! Also, don’t be afraid to get your own project funded using Jewcer. It’s easy and fun!

Happy Jewcing!