Treating Graduate, From Child Residential Care Institutions to the World Outside

Hiking on the Israeli trails- leisure culture, education and therapeutic aspects, for Placement outside home graduators, "Bridge to independence" program.

The hiking project takes members from the "bridge to independent" program` to travel by foot all around Israel` and its` a part of the building and enriching the leisure culture of young boys and girls which participate in the program.

Most of the leisure culture in the child residential car institutions is limited and dictated.

As part of the project` a group of young boys` and girls` graduators of those institutions` goes on an overnight hike` on the national Israel trail` food` sleeping and cooking gear on their back for about 15 k"m a day/ The trail is divided to a daily parts of 15-20 km per part` so we walk about two parts every weekend.

Those hikes enable two kind of experience: educational and therapeutic ones .At the educational aspect` learning the country by foot` meeting places and sits from the textbooks history, geographic, environment issues and so on.

At the therapeutic aspect, experience of success, hard weather conditions, rough ground` unknown area, out of their comfort zone .They are facing physical and mental difficulties` overcoming the road conditions, cooking and sleeping in the field, creating shared experiences, helping each other, learning how to organize and of course leadership.

In our vision, , we want to give the group a chance to experience the trail, to know and feel the land, and in the future to lead boys and girls who still lives in the child residential car institutions, and are nominated to join our program when reaching the age of 18.

Those hikes will be a part of the learning process and becoming an independent adult, at the end of the program somewhere at the age of 25.