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The empowerment program for Bedouin youth in Wadi Atir

About the program

How do we build a shared society, regional resilience, and leadership for the future generation?
At the Prisma Negev Center, we are embarking on a project in collaboration with the Wadi Atir Experience with the aim of providing Bedouin youth in the Negev with tools for personal empowerment and creating real and meaningful encounters between the communities.

Ahead of the next school year, we are establishing a new educational framework that comes to meet a burning need: a lack of empowerment, leadership, and innovation programs for Bedouin youth in the Negev, and a paucity of ongoing and genuine encounters between Jews and Arabs in the region.

How does it actually work?

The program will be implemented in two main phases, with learning focused on innovation, problem solving, leadership, and personal project development.

  • Phase 1: Groups of male and female university students (Jews and Arabs together) will serve as mentors and guide youth from the Hura community, along with the local Wadi Atir guidance team. Participants will work together on entrepreneurship, teamwork, and tackling complex challenges.
  • Phase 2: We will expand the activity to additional localities and create activities for Bedouin youth together with Jewish youth from the region. The goal is to build mixed work teams that will develop projects together and strengthen the connection in the region.

What do we want to achieve?

Our ambition is to position Wadi Atir as a regional center of education, empowerment, and community development, and to see results that speak for themselves on the ground:

  • Significantly improve the sense of competence, communication, and self-confidence of participating youth.
  • To see active participation and high persistence of students throughout all program sessions.
  • To create a stable framework for a "shared society" that hardly exists today, one that is based on joint action, respect, and mutual understanding.
  • To position the university as a body that leads the building of social resilience, equality, and the opening of opportunities throughout the Negev.