When people speak about education, they usually talk about the formal frameworks: nursery schools, elementary schools, high schools, achievements and grades. These frameworks develop thinking and intelligence, but when we’re talking about education, that’s not what’s most important.
Informal educational frameworks, or, as I like to call them “frameworks for value-oriented education”, give our children a supplementary framework. They nourish emotions, creativity and social involvement, along with imparting the ability to lead, a spirit of volunteering, the love of the land and many other important values. These values stabilize and strengthen young people’s self-estimation and their ability to deal with life itself.
Support and investment in youth will pay off and is one of the best Zionist investments imaginable. Our goal is to take an active and meaningful role in the education of the future generation of the state of Israel. We have taken responsibility where there are no government bodies, and we have spread KKL-JNF’s wings over informal education networks throughout the country. Whatever happens after school hours – KKL-JNF intends to be there.
Over the past year, KKL-JNF signed three historical cooperation agreements: with the pre-military academies, with youth movements and with youth organizations. We are committed to helping young girls and boys to acquire the tools and the values that will make it possible for them to be social leaders, officers in the army and outstanding scholars.
We believe that by means of these tools, they will lead the Zionist vision of 2036. They will repay the country, build new communities, strengthen the hold of the Jewish people on the state of Israel, and intensify its resilience.
This year, KKL-JNF is marking 115 years of its work. 115 years of activities on behalf of the Jewish people and for the land of Israel. 115 years of transforming the Zionist dream into a reality. KKL-JNF began its work through redemption of the land before the state was founded, supported the founding of the state as the operational arm of the Jewish people in the state of Israel, and accompanied it over the years until it became the green, modern and advanced country that it is today.
Zionism is a big word, which contains many components. KKL-JNF offers an answer to the many national challenges that the state of Israel is presently facing – affordable housing, encouragement and development of settlement in periphery regions, and much more. However, I am especially proud of our work in the field of education, which has continued over the decades and reaches all levels of children, teenagers and young people in the state of Israel: the Maof program for the empowerment of youth catalyzes change and has worked successfully for over fifteen years in peripheral communities; the Atzil program teaches new immigrants to know the country; and thousands of children, from nursery school age until high school, participate yearly in KKL-JNF’s scouting clubs.
I am proud to be at the helm of a veteran organization like KKL-JNF. An organization, which in the course of all its activities, in every field and every deed, has contributed towards the state of Israel’s prosperity. An organization that knows how to dream, to achieve new goals and to expand its activities. It is only imparting values and belief in the justice of our cause that will guarantee our future, it is only supporting education and helping youth, the next generation, that will guarantee the future of our country, This is Zionism!
The writer is the KKL-JNF World Chairman, the main partner of the Yediot Aharonot and ynet Educational Convention.