Padi, now 21, will soon leave the locked Nof Harim youth facility for the first time as a free man, after entering it at 17 following an arrest, trial, and a short prison term. He says he was once “a boy without self-confidence” who chased attention in destructive ways, but today he is halfway through engineering and mechanics studies at a technical college and hopes to work in the field.
His path changed through a robotics program launched inside youth care facilities, where most students study for matriculation through the Hila program and the overall graduation eligibility rate has been reported at just 9%. The first team at Nof Harim met about three years ago in a room that had been used for hairdressing. At first, the teens had no technical background and worked with the janitor’s tools. Even so, they earned the judges’ award in their first Israeli competition, which recognizes motivation and teamwork rather than results.
Padi says robotics taught him to handle pressure, cooperate, lead, improvise, and communicate across communities. Since the teams speak Arabic, they had to work in Hebrew in Israel and English abroad, so the school brought in an English teacher. The program is run through First, an international organization active in Israel with the Technion and funded by government ministries and tech companies, and the teams also receive mentors.
About six months ago, a mixed team from several youth-care institutions reached 70th place out of 200 at a robotics Olympiad in Panama, improving to 1,000th worldwide. Last week, after a string of wins in Israel, Nof Harim’s team traveled to Canada with a girls’ team from Al Bustan. Despite a major last-minute breakdown in an autonomous component, they fixed it quickly, advanced through a tough event, reached the final, and finished second. Padi said the success is also for other boys in the facility, who see their progress and think, “If they can, we can too.”
