Rosh Hodesh: It’s a Girl Thing! Evaluation

The multi-year study determined that, through Rosh Hodesh, Moving Traditions is helping Jewish institutions engage more effectively with teenage girls and helping them grow into confident young women ...

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Since Rosh Hodesh was founded, we have reached over 12,000 girls, and 1200 group leaders. We have just completed a comprehensive evaluation of the program to help us assess its strengths and weaknesses. Conducted by Pearl Beck, Ph.D. & Tobin Belzer, Ph.D., the national evaluation focused on girls, group leaders, and institutional partners who participated in Rosh Hodesh from 2008 to 2010. We heard from over 450 past participants, over 150 group leaders, and over 50 institutional partners. We are pleased to present our findings in an evaluation report published in April 2015. This evaluation report includes implications for the greater field of Jewish teen education.

What is the long-term impact of Rosh Hodesh?

We hear that girls in Rosh Hodesh love the program, recommend it to friends, and feel that it strengthens their connections to the Jewish community. But what about long-term outcomes?

Guided by Dr. Pearl Beck and Dr. Tobin Belzer, two leading social scientists in the field of evaluation, Moving Traditions is embarking on a national research project.

The goal is to learn both from past participants who are currently at least 16 years old how the program has affected their attitudes and behavior and to learn from group leaders about the impact of the program on their lives.

“Findings will be framed as recommendations,” say Beck and Belzer, “to inform decisions about modifying and improving the Rosh Hodesh program as it moves forward.”