This is the kind of school I always wanted to go to. It is a group of scholars in the classical sense of the word and I’ve met people who I hope to be friends with for the rest of my life.
An active campus life provides students with many opportunities and builds a strong and supportive group. The Campus Life Team ensures there is a full calendar of social activities that increase environmental and cultural awareness on campus.
Campus Life Team
The Campus Life Team consists of the Campus Life Director, the Campus Life Coordinator, and two Program Associates. The Program Associates are alumni of the program. They live on campus with the students and work with the Campus Life Director and the Campus Life Coordinator to run the program.
Aviv Saad, Campus Life Director
Aviv grew up in Givatayim in the center of Israel, today he lives in Kibbutz Ketura with his partner Gili and their two children. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities and Literature from Tel Aviv University. Before working at the Institute, he ran informal educational programs as part of Educating for Excellence, the Israeli Scouts, and the Kibbutz Grofit afterschool program. Aviv moved to the Arava region in 2019, and enjoys riding bicycles, practicing yoga, and hiking through the area.
Vita Kogachevskaya, Campus Life Coordinator
Vita is originally from Belarus, and moved to the Arava desert in 2022. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics & Management from Mogilev State University, and has been involved in environmental activism in Belarus and Israel. She enjoys hiking, skiing, kayaking, and video editing, and lives in Kibbutz Lotan with her husband and two children.
Elisha Halevi, Program Associate
Elisha was born in Efrat and moved to Jerusalem where he lived for 15 years before studying at the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies in the past year. He is a trained musician/audio engineer with a deep passion for environmental science, performing arts, cross-culture dialogue, and community building.
May Sitnik, Program Associate
May is originally from Haifa, and is deeply passionate about social justice and environmental sustainability. From a young age she has been involved in environmental activism to mitigate pollution in the Haifa Bay area. After graduating from the Arava Institute in 2019, May traveled in South East Asia, and later lived and worked in New Zealand and Australia. She holds a BSc in Public Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and has completed internships at Ecopeace Middle East, and the Israeli Climate Forum. Looking ahead, May plans to pursue a Master’s degree in Ecology & Environmental Management. Her hobbies are hiking in nature, engaging with different cultures, and regenerative agriculture.
Campus Life Activities
Outside of their academic schedule, students frequently take part in a variety of extracurricular activities including desert hiking, yoga, gardening, camping, mud building, music and horseback riding. There are regular potluck dinners, festive meals and religious and secular holiday activities, as well as culture, music and movie nights.
Each semester, students are encouraged to form their own activity groups based on subjects they want to teach and learn. Past activities have included conversational Hebrew and Arabic, salsa dance, gardening and environmental action, and creative writing.
Students are also invited to take part in Kibbutz events, holidays, and general activities. Students often mingle with kibbutz members and volunteers at the kibbutz pub and have the opportunity to be hosted by a kibbutz family for meals and coffee during the semester.
THE WEEKENDS
Although there are students on campus during the weekends and breaks, during the semester many students choose to travel, often being hosted in the homes of classmates or alumni that they meet on the program. The Arava Road, or Highway 90, runs just outside the main kibbutz gate, with buses going south to Eilat (a resort city on the Red Sea that borders Aqaba, Jordan) and north to the Dead Sea (two hours away), Be’er Sheva (three hours away), Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (each four hours away). For a quicker get-away, students visit a neighboring kibbutz called Yotvata, which is famous for its delicious ice cream and chocolate milk, made fresh from Yotvata’s dairy.