Now today’s update: There were four full day excursion options: Hashomer Hachadash Youth Movement with CEO Yoel Zilberman; An Israeli Journey (Masa Israeli) with CEO Uri Cohen; Footprints of the Tanach with Rabbi Menachem Leibtag; and Innovation in the Negev.
I selected Innovation in the Negev. More than half of the day, we were at MindCet in Yeruham. MindCet is a center for innovation and technological development in education. The founder and CEO is Avi Warshavsky. He has built a most innovative, creative approach to using state of the art technology for all different kinds of teaching and learning. Seeing and experiencing his R & D department, I had to remind myself I was in the Negev and not in Silicon Valley. Following this very impressive visit, we stayed in Yeruham to meet with the Executive Director and the beneficiaries of ATID BAMIDBAR. This is another Israeli organization doing ma’asim tovim/very good deeds on behalf of local Yeruham people who desperately need help and assistance.
From Yeruham, we traveled to another “Californiaesque” tech park. There we met with the CEO of a company called Center for Digital Innovation. He is part of a group of an undetermined number of incubator entrepreneurs. Interesting fact is that besides all of them being start up entrepreneurs, the various services all of them are providing only targets the American market.
Our last stop was Ben Gurion University. There we spent several hours at the Rothschild Cube Center for Effective Social Education. The extraordinarily sophisticated technology they use for interactive teaching and learning was an amazing experience.
After having left Jerusalem 12 hours earlier, we began our trip back. Everyone quite exhausted from all that we did, but everyone feeling it was a very worthwhile day.
~Alan Reinitz
