Menu
Throughout the year, students enjoy themed overnight tours and trips. These programs are designed to deliver a compelling educational experience that addresses key issues in Israeli society.
Our students help build the tour schedule, so there is already a strong sense of stepping out of their comfort zones. They learn how to organize tours and how to engage everyone participating.
In the beginning of the year the focus is on finding themselves and their place in the group. The program then shifts focus to Israeli society; by the end of the year, students understand their strengths and the impact they can have in this world.
Team Building Trip
The first trip prepares them for the learning, thinking, and the Hannaton principles that will be part of their Mechina experience. The two-day team building trip culminates with everyone entering the mechina together.
Orienteering Experience
Students learn to love the land and navigate within it, with parallels drawn between navigation skills that can be used for life: planning routes and finding your way after getting lost without technology.
We build this experience gradually:
Overnight in the Negev
This trip exposes students to the Negev’s broader picture:
Activism and Social Engagement
This begins with modernist and postmodernist philosophy to refine their understanding of movements that influence our experience. Students participate in tours, programming, and lectures with people who have experienced injustice or hunger and have chosen to effect change. WE continuously address the frustration in the room, asking "... what do we do with this". Students leave this program more socially conscious and motivated by the phrase: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Religion and State Encounters
The Religion and State series in the second half of the year gets students to grapple with issues of religion and state in Israel.
They meet politicians and activists to get the whole story on weekend public transportation, kashrut, Get refusal, new immigrants, conversion, weddings, and how everything impacts local and national budgeting.
This series includes a day at the Knesset, Har Habayit, a tour of the Christian Quarter and dialogue with Women of the Wall. For their day of activism they are introduced to the valuable work of nonprofits such as Israel Hofsheet, IRAC, Shabus (Weekend Public Transport), and Mavoi Satum. They are also hosted for a Shabbat in a Haredi community. This program is in partnership with the Masorti and Conservative movement.
Hannaton in Yehuda and Shomron
We analyze sources and examine our rights and responsibilities to non-Jewish residents. This series calls for a deeper engagement with narrative versus reality, and the shaping of memory versus history.
This overnight trip takes place in Yehuda and Shomron and is coordinated and directed through security channels. Students meet with left-wing and right-wing organizations as well as Palestinian residents. Each day, we set aside time to process their experiences.
Spring Celebration
The Zionist Journey in Pioneering and Renewal
A journey through time from the pioneers of the Yishuv to our revival and renewal through stories of heroism and the IDF.
Embracing Social Action
This is where they pour everything they learned about social action over the year for a final tikkun olam social action or activist project, which ends their year on a beautiful note. Everyone gets involved: Mechina staff choose the theme, and students plan, raise money, and implement their week-long project.
The Final Tiyul
This trip concludes their mechina gap year. They take the time to focus on having fun for perhaps the last time as a group. Students plan everything: food, accommodation, logistics, group activities, hikes and orienteering.
The Hannaton Educational Center, Kibbutz Hannaton, D.N. Hamovil 1796000
