Mifras - Educational Entrepreneurship Incubator

Just recently, school leaders and pedagogical coordinators from vocational schools under the Vocational Training Division of the Ministry of Labor met in northern and central Israel in parallel to think together about how to turn dual learning into something truly felt in both the classroom and real-world practice.

Through mapping, dialogue, and shared dilemmas, the same challenges surfaced again and again, but so did something just as important: the power of a broad partnership between Mifras, Chotam, the Division, and the Joint, which makes this work possible.

When organizations, school leaders, and practitioners work together, a real opportunity opens up to build vocational education that brings students closer to the world of practice and toward pathways with a future.

To understand what a living, breathing entrepreneurial culture looks like, you have to go out into the field.

As part of Cohort 2 of the Mifras Fellows Program, heads of education departments from Rishon LeZion, Rosh HaAyin, Givat Shmuel and Segev Shalom, together with their teams, went on a shared journey to explore entrepreneurial culture through diverse, real world examples.

🍃 Stop 1: The Ecological Greenhouse, Ein Shemer
We began at the Ecological Greenhouse in Ein Shemer. Very quickly you can feel how entrepreneurship there is not a project, but a culture.
Before the tour, Noam, the director of the Greenhouse, provided background and shared many initiatives underway on site.

We asked: How do you get people to initiate? How do you motivate them?
Noam replied: That’s a big question. Let’s go outside and hear from the team.

We met different staff members who shared their work. Among them:

A service-year volunteer who noticed an unused storage room and decided to turn it into a space for music jam nights.

An educator working with teens who, during one of her sessions, exposed them to environmental challenges – the students came up with solutions that were more creative than her own.

At the end of the visit, we came back to the question: How do you encourage entrepreneurship here?
We quoted the staff and reformulated what we saw and heard:

“This is a place where you’re allowed to dream – and where those dreams can be fulfilled.”
“We don’t ask if it will happen, we always ask how to make it happen.”
“We can bring any idea we want. Noam will challenge us with questions, but that’s to sharpen the process.”

It was a powerful example of how to create spaces of managed autonomy: people can bring their ideas, and leaders see their role as encouraging them to act – within a responsible, well guided process.

♻️ Stop 2: Shinua Hevrati (Social Transport)
From the world of education we moved into the world of community and society.
Tomer, the CEO and a true social entrepreneur, shared his personal story: how he started noticing unmanaged surplus everywhere, and how that led to a vision of turning waste into a resource.

On the tour we were exposed to:

The massive amount of surplus furniture and equipment that gets thrown away

A culture that encourages fast replacement instead of repair

The huge potential in rescuing these items and redirecting them to communities and nonprofits

Tomer’s story highlighted a key point: many of the most important solutions grow from the ground up.
Our responsibility as educational leaders is to create a culture that listens to what is happening on the ground and encourages people to take initiative.

The idea of “unmanaged resources” is something we can apply in many systems: looking again at what is wasted – time, spaces, budgets, talents – and asking how to build new, sustainable processes around them.

🤝 Learning together, acting locally
Between Ein Shemer and Shinua Hevrati, new connections formed among the different education departments. Ideas surfaced, deep conversations opened up, and a shared space of mutual inspiration emerged.

This is one of the great strengths of the Mifras Fellows Program:
the ability to learn from one another, to expand our perspective together, and then act within each leader’s local context – where the group process supports the organizational and personal change.

Warm thanks to Noam and the team at the Ecological Greenhouse in Ein Shemer,
to Tomer from Shinua Hevrati and Michal Sadeh for creating this meaningful link,
and to all the education department teams for their curiosity, openness, and courage to move forward.

As an educational entrepreneurship incubator, Mifras was honored to have played a role in supporting Michal Raz and her team in the development and implementation of their vision to improve patient education in Israeli hospitals. We were thrilled to learn about the recent opening of the new faculty at Kibbutzim College, which is the result of Michal's hard work and dedication.

Michal Raz's initiative was an ambitious undertaking, and we were impressed by her leadership and commitment throughout the process. As an alumna of Mifras's main program called "Amitim," Michal worked with our organization to develop her ideas and bring them to fruition.

The new faculty at Kibbutzim College will provide training programs for educational staff who work in hospitals. These programs will focus on developing the necessary skills and knowledge to provide effective education to patients and their families. The training will cover various aspects of patient education, including health promotion, disease prevention, and self-management.

Educational work in medical centers is a unique and complex field that requires a specialized set of skills and knowledge. The role of educational staff in medical centers is to provide patients and their families with the information and skills they need to manage their health effectively.

One of the key characteristics of educational work in medical centers is its emphasis on personalized and patient-centered education. Educational staff must take into account the unique needs and circumstances of each patient when developing education plans. This may include considerations such as the patient's age, language proficiency, and cultural background.

Another important aspect of educational work in medical centers is its focus on disease prevention and self-management. Educational staff must provide patients with the knowledge and skills they need to prevent the onset of chronic diseases and manage their existing conditions effectively. This may include education on healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercise and nutrition, as well as information on medication management and symptom recognition.

We believe that the opening of the new faculty at Kibbutzim College is a significant development for the healthcare sector in Israel. The training programs offered by the new faculty will enable educational staff to provide high-quality patient education that meets the diverse needs of patients and their families.

At Mifras, we are committed to supporting social entrepreneurs like Michal Raz and helping them to bring their ideas to life. We believe that education is a powerful tool for creating positive change in our society, and we are honored to have played a role in supporting Michal Raz's vision for improving patient education in Israeli hospitals.

The Keshet School staff at Kochav Yair-Zur Yigal underwent a very big change. We spoke with Abigail Passentin, the school's principal, and Liat Ziv, the school's social coordinator, who talked about the process and how the change helped staff and students during the crisis -
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⛵How did the "Mifras" program affect the staff?
First of all, the change affected the staff which has been accustomed over the years to working according to the "book" and here it received the opportunity to develop creativity and think out "of the box". The staff "grabbed" this opportunity "big time". The "Mifras" program gave many teachers the courage to dream - to begin with small dreams and go on to the bigger ones. Changes have become possible and an atmosphere was built that encourages lots of initiative and creativity from the teacher team.
⛵ Tell us about the venture you built -
The venture we entered into the school was built on principles of choice, flexibility and dynamics. We called the venture "Beged Hadssh"- a "new garment" - an acronym for principles and then found that the name signifies much more - the approach advocates to a school program tailored to each student's needs/ personalities/abilities.
"Beged Hadash" is a " hothouse" for school initiatives. We realized that the needs of the students go beyond academic achievement which was always one of the highest in the country. The educational approach of the venture places emphasis on the learning and development processes and less on product evaluation. The teaching staff works on proficiency in deep and relevant 21st century skills that enable choice and flexibility for students.
⛵ What is the change the school and students have undergone?
The school excelled for years in its achievements while the social aspect and learning experience were pushed aside. Today, students also excel in academic achievement and in social achievement and their connection and influence within the school improved and enhanced. They realize that you can dare to dream, and are less afraid of failing because they see that they are being measured on the process. The school atmosphere has improved, there is a desire to learn with pleasure and interest and not memorize textbooks and only strive for good grades.
⛵ How did you continue the process even during the Corona days?
The school has become accustomed to thinking in a certain flexible way and thus, the preparation for the new routine has been carried out in a similar way. Also from a distance - we listened to the needs of the students, the teacher's team tried to offer a variation and varied system according to the voices echoed by the students, gave the students challenging assignments, shorter lessons than usual, we worked in smaller groups and we could talk about the situation we all are in.
In summary, when we introduced the venture into school, it was difficult to recruit the teachers to be actively involved. It took a while, but once we implemented a small change like taking classes outside the classroom boundaries - initiatives were introduced and implemented with a "snowball effect". The school is in a constant mode of change and upgrading.
One of the projects that we have proposed this year as a pilot and has been a great success is 'Selection Tuesday' - the teaching staff offers a variety of lessons on topics that are not necessarily within the conventional curriculum, and students choose to enter classes based on what is of interest to them.
The team enjoys the challenge and opportunity to teach different lessons than usual and students and enjoy personal pathways and the opportunity to develop and enrich themselves.

כוכב יאיר בית ספר קשת

Meet Miri Keidar, The Principal of the Avishur Elementary School and an alumna of the Fellows Program for Educational Entrepreneurship Development at Mifras Incubator.
Their school initiative is "Science in movement.".
At a school with one of the most diverse and challenging populations possible, we dealt with problems of attention, discipline and low academic performance.
Inspired by neuroscience, we challenged the most basic learning methods and integrated extensive work on movement.
Most classes (including language, science, math, history etc.) incorporate movement sessions with exercises to improve brain function, calm the students, and increase creativity and content learning.

You are invited to see how it looks here: https://youtu.be/5ujwvJcQpyM

The most significant and exciting thing that happened following the initiative was the real change in students’ behavior. A lot less wandering in and out of classes, a clear expression of joy and happiness in all settings, a significant increase in demand to enroll in the school, improvement in the school’s scores in the national 5th-grade tests, and a teaching staff that now claims anything is possible

תוכנית מפרש

Meet Anat Gal-Kaveblum, the principal of the Shenkar School, Holon, Israel and an alumna of the Fellows Program for Educational Entrepreneurship Development at Mifras. Their school initiative is "The freedom to create, the ability to succeed."
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🎒 What was your challenge? The school children will enter middle school with the same future opportunities as their peers from all over the city. The school population is very under-served and diverse with many of them non-native speakers of Hebrew. Our challenge is to ensure our children have and equal and even a higher starting point relative to other children and develop skills to integrate into society in the future.
We embarked on the belief that it was possible, despite the complex starting point.
🎒 Why did you join the Mifras program? I was looking for an opportunity for a broad process that would allow the school staff and me to develop creative solutions ‘outside the box’ but also give the staff an opportunity and space to initiate, grow and develop. We did not want ready-made external plans, but something we could create from our passion and according to our very specific needs and conditions.
🎒 How has Mifras helped you reach a solution? The uniqueness of Mifras is not providing any pre-design model or a complete solution for school innovation, but a framework and work process where initiators and developers within the school do what is right, what works for us - as per our concrete local needs. It's a huge challenge, but also a huge opportunity for real change.
🎒 What change have the school, staff and students undergone? Our initiative is called "The freedom to create, the ability to succeed" and it expresses our ambition: art, creativity and independence in all school learning processes. We have been able to develop initiative-based learning, projects and deliverables combined with art in all classes (yes, also in math, history and science). During the implementation of the project, the results of the national standardized tests for Hebrew language jumped from the second decile to the eighth decile in 3 years (!).
In addition, we took overall responsibility for expanding the informal education framework that was inaccessible to children in our area. Through collaborations initiated with a remote community afterschool learning center and youth movement, this framework is now operating out of school in the afternoon and in as well-coordinated and collaborative form.
🎒 How do you proceed? Each year we develop and add, draw conclusions and allow ourselves to evolve primarily to fulfill our dreams. Next year, we will run a community arts center at the school and a Makers space for use also by all neighborhood residents of all ages.

One of the fundamentals of our work is that once done in a thoughtful and professional measure, innovation and intrapreneurship can be taught and give new meanings to educational practices and perceptions of the role of teachers, to become educational innovators.
"School reform” and “capacity building” must be changed to encourage autonomous development of Educational Intrapreneurship in a structured manner that enables community involvement, peer review and scaling, ultimately creating a discourse of educational Intrapreneurship.

You are welcome to share your feedback here!

https://cies2020.org/portfolio/school-intrapreneurship-as-a-means-of-educational-reform/