Weekend Seminar

Last weekend, March 28+29, a World Habonim Dror Seminar was held on Kibbutz Afikim. Participants included shnatties from English-speaking countries such as North America, England, Holland, South Africa, Australia & New Zealand. This was the first formal opportunity the shnatties had to meet the "new" participants from the southern hemisphere, who arrived early in February.
The seminar was a lot of fun, with programming partially built by different participant groups themselves. The shnatties were responsible for a wonderful Kabbalat Shabbat involving performances by mixed mishpachot (families) from amongst all the countries participating.
There was a lot of games, skits and chuggim (small interest groups).
On Saturday we had chuggim on various issues facing children across the world, such as child exploitation; child soldiers; child sex-trafficking; child refugees and more. This was followed by a screening of the movie "Newsies"based on the true story of the Newsboys strike of 1899 in New York City (a youth-led campaign to force change in the compensation given to the child-labour force).
Following the movie we had a wonderful barbeque lunch in the sunshine, and one more peula which looked at the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other examples of how a unification comes through an expression of responsibility for the other and finding a partnership of building the same society.