Youth Village

What makes Youth Villages unique?

1. Large Scale Capacity:

Large scale Youth Villages offer care, safety, guidance and high quality education to an average of 250 up to 1500 boarders. Children share school facilities with up to 1000 day students from surrounding communities. The Israeli youth village organization cares for over 40.000 adolescents each year in 300 residential Education & Care programs.

2. Focus & Commitment:

Residents ages range between the ages of one to twenty. Children grow up in campus dormitories alongside especially trained adults & adoptive families responsible for their overall long term well-being, daily routine, and counseling needs. All staff receive qualified training in Youth Village methodology:

Around the clock residential care includes after school enrichment programs, additional tutoring, sports, arts, clinical therapy, medical care and recreation. Housemothers and fathers, teachers and managers discuss the needs of individual students and help them focus on schoolwork, improve relationships at home and build lasting self-confidence. The ‘around the clock’ nature of life in youth villages forms deep and trusted relationships amongst students and counselors – and affords precious time to dedicate long-term cooperation and work together to solve daily issues.

‘All kids need is a listening ear and quality time. Living alongside the children creates space for counselors  to understand the needs of individual students, help them focus on schoolwork, improve relationships and build lasting self-confidence.’

Itzik Shriki – Youth Village Counselor and House father

youthvillage3. Flexibility & Adaptability:

Specialized in raising children from highly varied social levels, youth villages absorb children from various cultural or inter-racial backgrounds, including (in Israel) Jewish, Muslim and Christian children. The Youth Village module is proven able to be adaptable. In recent years one was built in Rwanda – East Africa:

‘ASYV – The first African Youth Village, houses 500 genocide orphan from various ethnic backgrounds including Hutu & Tutsi children. This is unique in Africa.



4. Local Capacity Building:

By buying food and other materials locally, and offering local people work and training as teachers, care takers or laborers, youth villages develop strong sustainable economic ties with surrounding communities and stakeholders.

5. Social Development:

After graduating from youth villages many students tend to choose socially orientated professions such as Medicine, Law or Education. Many graduates return to the villages to become counselors or teachers themselves.