The social entrepreneur who has joined Galila lately is Micha Simbaleta, Director of the Nirim youth village, located on the shoreline community of Bustan HaGalil.
There are numerous youth at-risk villages in Israel; all of them are working for an excellent and much-needed cause. However, Nirim stands out from all of them, due primarily to Micha’s vision of picking up a crop of Israel’s most outcast youths and evolving them, in the space of 2-3 years, into young men and women with a future – after successfully completing their high school matriculation and being enlisted for a meaningful service in the IDF. This is the key to their re-entry back into Israeli society and a sure platform for them to build a normative future for themselves.
Following an in-depth review of all of Nirim’s program and urgent needs, the program that will benefit most from our assistance is the ‘Graduate’s Home’ project. The importance of our funding contribution is based on 2 factors: 1. there is no additional funding for this project from any source and 2. This is the ‘final push’ in assisting the Nirim graduates to re-engage back into Israeli society as normative and contributing citizens.
The graduate’s home provides the Nirim graduating students with a second home – in some cases, as their only home – for 200 graduates age 18-25, with the numbers growing annually.
Micha understands that without this project, all of the life-changing work that has been devoted to each and every one of the now-graduated students can be undone and compromised.