If you spend time this summer at Bnei Akiva’s Camp Moshava in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, you probably won’t pay much attention to the waiter serving your meal. He’ll be bringing you plates of food while he serves three other tables amidst the hubbub of children eating, playing, and laughing in the air-conditioned dining room. Maybe you’ll catch his infectious smile or marvel at the enjoyment he derives from his job. If you’re lucky your waiter will be Glen Mueller and he is one of Yachad’s success stories.
Each morning, Glen, like all the rest of the wait staff, rises at six-thirty to begin organizing breakfast. After two shifts he gets a brief break, followed by more shifts setting up lunch for the several hundred campers and staff members. Late afternoon, Glen reports back to the dining room to help set up for dinner. While it may sound like an exhausting day, Glen doesn’t mind.
“I chose to be a waiter on my own,” Glen, 20, explained. “It was an independent dec-ision. It’s a lot of work but I love it and I do it well.”
“Success means different things to different people,” explained Dr. Joe Goldfarb, director of Yachad’s summer programs. “For Glen, success meant being able to work in a summer camp on his own without supportive job coaches.”
Glen, who has a learning disability, began attending Moshava as a member of Yachad’s shadow program. His father, Dr. Stuart Mueller, joked that Glen was lured to the camp because Pennsylvania is cooler during the summer than Houston where the family lives. As part of Yachad’s shadow program, members live with the rest of the bunk, and have a specific counselor assigned to work with them. Counselors glide between being a shadow for the Yachad member and a regular bunk counselor. The situation worked very well for Glen.
After two years in the shadow program, Glen signed up for Yachad’s vocational program at Camp Moshava, where he received job training as a waiter with mild supervision from Yachad instructors. Yachad currently has nine vocational programs in different summer camps throughout the United States. Glen quickly became proficient at handling the distractions of the dining room. Shlomo Stern, who was in charge of the dining room was also with Bnei Akiva in Houston and familiar with Glen’s abilities – he was a great help to the young man.
From working one table to working three and then five, Glen quickly progressed.
“He is as positive a per-son as you will ever meet,” said Stern. “Glen’s a real team player; he is willing to work hard and do whatever needs to be done.”
“We work with our coaches to ensure that all tasks are taught in a gradual manner to ensure that our members can learn well and thoroughly,” said Dr. Goldfarb. “For example, a typical waiter serves 4-5 tables, while a member of our vocational program would start with one table and focus on the demands of the job and then we’d encourage him or her to take on another when and if they are ready. Some individuals need more coaching than others — that’s part of our fade-in-and-fade-out procedure. We mentor from a greater distance as our members become more independent.”
“[Being a waiter] is probably one of the toughest jobs in camp,” related Glen. “It’s a very challenging position but I love it because I get to interact with the campers and that is fun and enjoyable. I get to make them smile.”
Dr. Mueller added, “The summer job helped my son become more independent and he was happy to make money on his own.”
Last summer, Glen returned to Moshava, not as a member of Yachad’s vocational program, but as a full-fledged waiter hired by the camp.
Stern said that Glen’s transition from Yachad’s vocational program to full-time staff was quite smooth. “I think that having so much unstructured free time was hard for him initially, but Glen quickly figured out how much time he should spend socializing and when he should take some time for himself,” said Stern, adding that the conversational ice-breakers that Glen learned at Yachad helped him find things to talk about with his co-workers.
Making pizzas in the Camp Moshava Kitchen
Stern praised his waiter’s work ethic. “He has remarkable energy and spirit – he is eager to participate in whatever we were doing. Glen truly motivates his colleagues.”
“Glen is probably better than any other waiter because of his work ethic and happiness with the job,” said fellow waiter Yoni Kuhr. “Glen works hard and always has a smile on his face. The kids love him, not only because he is a great waiter, but also because he is so kind, understanding, and warm. Being friends with Glen is an honor – he truly is an amazing person.”
Glen said that though he’s no longer in the Yachad bunk, he still makes sure to see his friends from the vocational program. “I still hang out with them because they are my friends.”
Glen is spending the year in Israel at Darkaynu, a yeshiva that combines learning with job placement. The young man plans to return to Moshava this summer and he hopes to eventually have a career working with children with disabilities, a passion he says was shaped by his time working with the Friendship Circle in Houston and on Yachad Shabbatonim. Glen shared that he felt great satisfaction in working with those who required more assistance than he did.
“Having a job and working is for everyone,” stated Dr. Goldfarb. “Having a job is an important part of living a satisfying life and that’s no different for someone with a disability.”
Or, as Dr. Mueller put it: “Every person, no matter what their potential is, has the right to reach it, and Yachad helps them do it.”
Michael Orbach is a staff writer at the Orthodox Union.
This article is from the 2015 issue of Belong Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy please email belong@ou.org.