History
The first youth village was Mikve Israel. In the 1940s and 50s, a period of mass immigration to Israel, youth villages were an important tool in immigrant absorption. Youth villages were established during this period by the Jewish Agency, WIZO, and Na'amat. After the establishment of Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Education took over the administration of these institutions, but not their ownership.
The Hadassah-Neurim Youth Village, founded by Akiva Yishai, was the first vocational school for Youth Aliyah children, who had been offered only agricultural training until then.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, young people from broken or troubled homes were sent to youth villages. Today some of the villages have closed, but many continue to provide an educational framework for immigrant youth. Others have introduced programs for gifted students from underprivileged neighborhoods, exchange programs for overseas high school students and vocational training facilities. Some function as ordinary high schools and accept non-residential students.
In 2007, Yemin Orde Youth Village, established in the early 1950s on Mt. Carmel, had a student population consisting of youngsters from all over the world, including Muslim refugees from Darfur. The village provides a safe haven for destitute children aged 5-19. A youth village patterned after the Israeli model is now being established in Rwanda.
Read more about this topic: Youth Village
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)