For 20-year-old Caryn Goldenberg of Lawrenceville, working to alleviate hunger in the community has been an ongoing commitment.

Goldenberg can remember helping to organize Thanksgiving food drives when she was in elementary school and again when she was attending the Lawrenceville School. And when her mother, Jackie, served on the committee for the Ohel Avraham Kosher Food Pantry at the Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Mercer County a few years ago, Goldenberg was right there beside her, stocking the pantry, helping out in the office, and doing whatever needed to be done.

“I’ve been doing community service forever,” Goldenberg said during a recent interview at the Pavilion at JFCS. “It’s just what I know. I just like doing it and being involved. Community service is very important to me.”

So when Goldenberg decided to take a year off after her freshman year at Dickinson College in Carlyle, Pa., this past summer, the staff at JFCS didn’t have to think twice before offering her the AmeriCorps position that was initiated at the agency last year.

AmeriCorps, a national program for community service, funds the position through the Princeton-based Bonner Foundation and its New Jersey Bonner Leader Program, a program that provides scholarships to students who work on anti-hunger initiatives in the community. The NJ Commission on National and Community Service oversees the AmeriCorps program in the state.

“My focus in the AmeriCorps position is the food pantry — working with hunger initiatives in the area,” Goldenberg said. “I have to do 900 hours in a year.”

Working as an assistant to Debra Levenstein, director of prevention and support services for JFCS, Goldenberg has so far spent some of those hours meeting with other Bonner leaders at TASK, the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, and at the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton. She has networked with Bonner students at Rider University, Mercer County Community College, and Middlesex Community College. And she has researched and written lesson plans on hunger awareness she will use when she mentors area Hebrew school students. In addition, she serves on the JFCS Food Pantry Committee, working to raise hunger awareness in area congregations.

Levenstein said that having Goldenberg on hand in the AmeriCorps position has been beneficial to the mission of the Ohel Avraham Food Pantry, which offers nonperishable kosher foods to needy Jewish and non-Jewish families in the region.

“Having her here has increased awareness about the food pantry and its needs and increased community support.” Levenstein said. “Her focus really is with the pantry — expanding understanding about hunger and expanding understanding about the need for community support — what the needs are in the community and how [people] can make a difference.

“I do believe it has had an impact on the pantry,” she added. “I think we have younger people doing things for the pantry. It’s not just about collecting food, but about actually going out and creating opportunities for stocking the food pantry. If we can create awareness in these young people, their commitment will only grow. It’s creating connections for younger people for the greater good of the Jewish people and the community at large.”

To help foster that commitment, Goldenberg is hoping to bring her mentoring program to pre-bar/bat mitzva students at synagogues throughout the region. On Sunday morning, March 11, she will launch the mentoring program with students at her own synagogue, Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville.

“My goal is to get the kids involved,” she said. “I want to educate the kids and to bring awareness about the food pantry — how it ties in with the Jewish values of tzedaka (charity) and g’milut hasadim (acts of loving-kindness). It’s also to give these kids ideas about bar/bat mitzva projects and the things they can do to get involved in the pantry.”

Her time in the AmeriCorps position at JFCS has helped her not only to hone her leadership and organizational skills, but also to shape her goals for the future, according to Goldenberg.

“Working here in the AmeriCorps position, taking the year off — I feel this was the right decision for me,” she said. “Being here at the agency this year, I’ve had the chance to experience real life situations and dilemmas I could never have experienced while in college. A college education is very important to me, but I want to make sure that what I’m studying is what I want to do.”

At this point, Goldenberg said, it is clear that what she wants to do is to become a social worker and to work for a non-profit agency. To fulfill that goal, she has decided to transfer from Dickinson, where she served as treasurer of the Jewish Student Organization, to a college with strong sociology, psychology, and anthropology programs. “I’d like a school with a strong Jewish community,” she said, “and social action is very important to me, as well.

“Now, I’m putting everything together in my life,” she said. “My goal in life is to be happy — finding out what makes me happy and using that in my career path.”

For information about Goldenberg’s mentoring program, call her at JFCS, 609-243-0390.