Five young people from Taiwan are visiting Israel this month and will
spend most of their time at Hakefar-Hayarok (Green Village),
according to government officials.
Take Chang Hsin-yu, Cheng Yu-shun, Lin Yun, Chen Wan-shiuan, and Hsieh Feng-ho, and send them off to far away Israel, at the invitation of the Israeli Youth Council, and a good summer adventure is in the works.
It’s a cultural exchange, a youth exchange, and a scientific exchange.
Israel’s Representative to Taiwan Raphael Gamzou gave the five Taiwanese nationls a pep talk before they boarded a flight to Tel Aviv, saying: “I hope that the success of this trip will help to promote the signing of a mutual youth exchange memorandum of
understanding between Taiwan and Israel.”
The international ecology and leadership summer program will allow the Taiwanese students to participate in the international youth exchange program, which is being organized by Israel’s National Council for Youth Exchange.
The program will focus on the themes of ecology and youth leadership, and will feature workshops, adventure, ecological and cultural activities, and trips to Israel’s museums and popular tourist attractions.
It’s a long way from the Far East to the Middle East, but for a group of Taiwanese young people, the journey will be a trip to remember and cherish.
(PHOTO CAPTION: Israel’s Representative to Taiwan, Raphael Gamzou, seated center, receives members of a Taiwanese youth delegation before their departure for Israel to attend an international ecology and leadership summer program for young people in Hakefar-Hayarok (Green Village).) Photo credit: Central News Agency, Taiwan
This guest post is by Danny Bloom, a climate activist working in Taiwan. He graduated from Tufts College in 1971 in Boston. He is an advocate of polar cities, building retreats for humankind for when the effects of global warming will make regions we live in today inhospitable.
Postscript background info:
From the village website:
“The Levi Eshkol ‘Green Village’ (Hakfar Hayarok, in Hebrew) is, as its name implies, a green haven in the bustling central Sharon area in Israel.
This is a youth village which combines modern high-tech studies with practical work experience in various fields, in such a way as to develop the students’ self-confidence and afford them a sense of achievement. The Kfar has 1,200 students between the ages of 12 to 20, both Sabras and new immigrants, who live together in warm and supportive surroundings.
The Kfar is an educational and organizational complex which aims to empower the students so that they may realize their inner potential and develop both personally and as part of a supportive social framework. This is an educational enterprise which teaches the student to take an active part in all the village activities; co-operation and mutual responsibility are our way of life. The essence of the Kfar is teamwork, which aims at turning out an autonomous value-based future citizen who is prepared to contribute to society.”