About Gisha Center
A professional home for training, education and experiential activity, believing every person can grow through experience.
Gisha Center was born in the field, out of a clear purpose: to help at-risk youth. In the early years we ran long processes with struggling teenagers in youth clubs, yeshivas and a range of organizations. We stayed with them over time, through successes and falls, and saw the result with our own eyes. A teenager who had already given up begins to believe in himself, a broken group learns to work together, and trust built slowly turns into real change.
From there the next step was clear: to take all of this good and bring it to the wider Orthodox community, without giving up the community's values for a moment and without compromising on professionalism.
At first almost no one had heard of us. The field was new, and the idea did not interest many people. Today, after more than seventeen years, please G-d, more than one hundred thousand participants have been through our programs, in 11 countries and on four continents.
We empower educators and students, strengthen communities in Israel and abroad, and open a real connection and dialogue within the community, out of acceptance of the other and the different. We run fathers and sons and mothers and daughters programs, and support, through dedicated workshops, those whose lives have led them down a harder path: widowers, orphans, divorced men and women, children of divorced parents, and people in medical recovery processes. Alongside all of this, we train the next generation of ODT and adventure therapy facilitators.
Behind every number stands a person. And as with those teenagers at the beginning, we still see it again and again today: when you trust a person, give them responsibility, and leave them room to find their own way, they surprise everyone, and above all themselves.
What guides us
Will of the Creator
To do the will of the Creator, directing every activity and every journey toward serving Hashem, with faith and yirat shamayim.
As one person, one heart
To connect the children of Hashem as one person with one heart, unity, brotherhood, and a true bond among every participant.
Real experience
We believe in learning through hands-on experience, challenge and journey.
The power of the group
The group is a space for growth, connection and mutual support.
Emotional growth
Every activity is aimed at real personal and emotional growth.
Belief in every person
We believe every person has a place and a strength, and the activity here exists to discover it.
Gisha Center's Guiding Principles
Leadership, field, experience, Torah and yirat shamayim
Gisha Center operates from the belief that a true experience in the field can open hearts, build relationships, strengthen trust, and give a person new strength in the work of life.
The activity is not just a game, challenge, or group cohesion exercise. It is an educational and values-based journey, in which every participant has the opportunity to discover responsibility, courage, belonging, listening, faith, and yirat shamayim within himself.
1. Vision and action
We set out for every activity with a clear goal: where we want to lead the group, what we want to strengthen, and what small change may occur in each participant. The vision is translated into practical activity, tasks, conversation, and processing, with full flexibility for what happens in the field.
2. Group behavior
The participant learns to see himself as part of a group. Not only 'what do I need,' but 'what does the group need from me.' Cooperation, responsibility, mutual respect, helping others, and taking part in the shared effort are the foundation of every activity.
3. Presence and listening
The facilitator is not only running activities. He is present, listens, sees the participants, notices what is said and what is left unsaid. Facilitation is done with calm, respect, patience, and without judgment, so that everyone can feel safe being part of the group.
4. Safety and boundaries
Physical, emotional, and spiritual safety are foundational conditions. We build a clear, respectful, and protected space with proper boundaries, age-appropriate and group-appropriate matching, and attention to participants who need special sensitivity.
5. Professional skill
Good activity requires professionalism: preparation, mastery of facilitation tools, understanding group dynamics, risk management, matching challenges, and the ability to lead meaningful processing after the experience. The facilitator continues to learn, improve, and refine his work.
6. Coping with pressure and uncertainty
In the field, not everything goes according to plan, and that is part of the learning. Through challenges, mishaps, pressure, confusion, or changing conditions, participants learn to keep proportion, rethink, help one another, and discover strengths they do not always meet in daily life.
7. Judgment and decision-making
The facilitator learns when to lead, when to ask, when to pause, when to let the group cope, and when to intervene. Sound decision-making combines responsibility, listening, understanding risk, knowing the participants, and a broad educational view.
8. Self-awareness and humility
Every participant and every facilitator learns to know himself: strengths, weaknesses, boundaries, reactions under pressure, and his impact on the environment. From self-awareness are born humility, responsibility, correction of character traits, and a real ability to grow.
9. Processing and internalization
The experience does not end when the game ends. The main thing is to stop, ask, understand what happened, what we learned, and how to take it into life: to home, to cheder, to yeshiva, to the team, to the family, and to avodat Hashem.
10. Torah and yirat shamayim
At Gisha Center we see every activity as an opportunity to strengthen the person also in his inner spirituality. Not through coercion or slogans, but through natural connection: responsibility, faith, gratitude, interpersonal relationships, joy, boundaries, humility, overcoming challenges, and working on character traits.
Nature as our classroom
Nature is one of our greatest schools. At Gisha Center we use the open space to develop connection, responsibility, teamwork and leadership, while protecting the environment, respecting the land, and leaving every place clean and honored.
Transparency & Registration
Gisha Center is registered as association no. 580592863. View our registration details on GuideStar.
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