Volcani Institute Program

If Nissim had followed family tradition, he would be sitting in jail. His father and grandfather were both drug dealers and petty criminals. And in ordinary circumstances, Nissim—who knew how to break and enter but not how to read and write—would undoubtedly have followed in their footsteps.

What saved the young man was a vegetable garden at the Volcani Agricultural Research Institute in Beit Dagan, not far from Tel Aviv. He was brought there by ELEM an organization devoted to helping youth in distress, which in cooperation with Volcani, has developed a program to take kids off the streets and give them some agricultural experience. Research Institute land was allocated for the project and Volcani personnel agreed to serve as instructors without compensation.

Nissim and a dozen other youngsters spend six hours, twice a week, tilling the fields, irrigating them and eventually harvesting the melons, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and other crops. Later the produce is packaged and sold, primarily to Volcani personnel, with the money going to the kids themselves. They could have earned much more peddling drugs, their likely alternative employment, but this way it is more likely that they will remain on the straight and narrow.

The youngsters in the program are from Lod and Ramle, Arab-Jewish towns east of Tel Aviv with a low standard of living and a sky-high crime rate. The participants include a number of Sabras – Jews and Arabs—as well as some recent immigrants. Statistics published earlier this month indicate that some one-third of Ethiopian and Russian immigrant youth never reach high school or feel part of Israeli society. Inevitably, some of the dropouts end up on the wrong side of the law.

ELEM can’t, of course, solve the problem on its own. But it contributes to a solution by running a variety of outreach programs all over the country. These include, for example, clubhouses for alienated youth, and for those who need help but won’t come to the clubhouses, it sends out vans with volunteers and refreshments to places where troubled young prostitutes and petty criminals gather. It also provides temporary housing for some of them.

The leaders of ELEM believe that he new program at the Agricultural Research Institute is another step in the right direction

By Nechemia Meyers, The Jewish Tribune, December 7, 2006