Yesterday, I was honored to deliver the commencement address to a most impressive group of graduates.

Not from college. Not from graduate school. Not even from high school (well, not exactly).

This was the graduating class of UJA’s Carole and Michael Friedman Manhattan Philanthropic Advisory Council for Teens (PACT), which brings together high school students from across our community to learn about philanthropy by doing philanthropy.

For one Sunday a month for nine months, they gather in a UJA conference room, organized into four subgroups, each focused on a specific piece of UJA’s work. They develop expertise in their area, learning about needs and opportunities, how grants can help solve problems, how to raise funds, and ultimately how to allocate those funds for maximum impact.

Amazingly, the PACT program is now in its 14th year, and nearly 750 young people have participated over that time, including 110 participants this year — with 26 graduating seniors.

Over the years, one of my favorite pastimes when I’m in the office on Sunday is peeking in on the PACT participants to see them in action.

What always strikes me is the seriousness with which these students approach this work. They’re juggling SATs, college applications, sports, studies. And yet, for these hours, it all goes away as they dive into issues of poverty, aging, mental health, antisemitism, Israel, and the responsibilities of communal leadership. In fact, their Sunday afternoon conversations often mirror the conversations my colleagues and I have throughout the rest of the week.

When I spoke at their graduation — surrounded by beaming parents and grandparents — I had to admit out loud: I’m a bit jealous.

Because these students already have their eyes open to the needs all around them. Which means they have a 15-year head start on me.

I can pinpoint the moment my own eyes were first opened, and how it changed the trajectory of my life.

Just after graduating law school in 1983, I moved to the Upper West Side. It was then — and still is — a wonderful place to live, surrounded by friends and family. And nearly everyone I spent time with seemed a lot like me: similar age, background, interests.

Then, a few years later, a friend invited me to help deliver Thanksgiving meals through DOROT, an organization that supports isolated older adults.

That meal delivery changed my life.

We didn’t just drop off the food. We stayed and spent time with an elderly woman who lived just a few blocks from my apartment. She was largely shut in and rarely left her home.

And over time, I came to realize there were thousands of people just like her living all around me, people who, until that moment, had been almost completely invisible to me.

I never walked the streets of the Upper West Side in quite the same way again.

I ended up becoming deeply involved with DOROT and eventually joined its board. And through that experience — which I later learned was supported by UJA-Federation — I first became connected to UJA itself.

But perhaps the most surprising part of my time at DOROT was this: Although I was there to support others, more often than not, I was the one who walked away uplifted and inspired by the extraordinary, resilient people I met.

And at a time when I was spending most of my waking hours as a young litigation associate, this work gave me a profound sense of meaning and purpose. More broadly, it opened my eyes to the needs all around me.

My hope is that PACT has shown these students that greatness is not something distant or abstract. It exists in the ability each of us has to make a real difference in the lives of other people.

To think…it all starts with Sundays at UJA.

From PACT, these students will go on to college, graduate school, careers, and lives of service — becoming the philanthropists, leaders, and changemakers our community needs to build the future we want. The future we deserve.

Indeed, many already have. PACT alumni are now involved across UJA — and beyond UJA, they’re serving in communal roles, from synagogues to day schools to work that impacts the broader community.

At a time when there is so much understandable concern for the challenges we face, PACT offers some much-needed reassurance, and hope.

Here is a generation given the tools to lead, to take responsibility for the world around them.

To say: “We’re stepping forward. With our eyes wide open.”

Shabbat shalom