SECURING AN ISRAEL
OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
THROUGH EDUCATION

Some facts:
In 1999, the year before ATIDIM was launched, less than 1% of the Israel Defense Forces prestigious Academic Reserves came from Israel’s socially and geographically vulnerable periphery.

Today, only three years into the program, almost 40% of the IDF Academic Reserves is comprised of ATIDIM students.

Equally as impressive: there is no affirmative action or quotas for this group. ATIDIM students must compete with all other candidates for both the IDF Academic Reserve and the universities on equal terms.

But these statistics go far beyond a reflection of the success of individual students.

ATIDIM is a national program to develop the human resources and close the socio-economic gaps crippling Israel’s periphery through creating equal educational opportunity.

And in the context of increasing threats facing Israel, ATIDIM is one of the most important social initiatives underway.

While the State of Israel has made tremendous advances since its founding, ever-widening gaps have developed between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ Nowhere is this gap more pronounced than in the comparison of socio-economic levels between the center of the country and Israel’s periphery—the Galilee in the north and the Negev in the south.

After more than fifty years—and still referred to as ‘development’ areas—towns in the periphery originally established around industries that required non-skilled labor, have increasingly become pockets of despair and high unemployment. The extraordinary success of ATIDIM’s new approach to education represents the first quantum leap towards finally realizing Ben-Gurion’s long-standing challenge to bridge this vast social chasm.

It is a win-win situation. Securing a better future for traditionally disenfranchised young people and transforming the landscape of Israeli society.

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