About us

The Young Persons' Institute for the Promotion of Creativity and Excellence is a non-profit organization, founded in 1970, as an enrichment program, with the aim to challenge the talents of children (aged 5-15) to become their potentials, e. g. to activate and actualize their abilities into giftedness and excellence; to help them to cope with their problems within a society that has difficulty to accept those who could not "conform" and were different, children who ask more questions, who get bored, because they perceive and understand things faster then their peers.

The Board of Directors of the Institute, chaired by Prof. I. Kelson, includes, as for today, three members of Tel-Aviv University , three members of the Educational Department of Tel-Aviv Municipality, one member from Ministry of Education, one member from the Parent's Association and four former students of our Institute, who were out standing in their achievements.

There is also an Audit-Control Committee, chaired by Advocate Zipora Balitzer, with two other members who meet twice a year with the accountant of the Institute Mr. H. Dunsky, Certified Public Accountant.

The aims of our work are: to satisfy the needs of the talented and gifted to know, to create, to belong and be accepted. In other words to accept the child as he can be and not impose on him how he must be . To challenge gifted children and to satisfy not only their intellectual curiosity , but also to help them to expand their emotional experiences and to stimulate their social interaction and involvement.

Our creative-holistic approach to the education of the gifted is to challenge the whole personality, to look at things from different aspects, to ask questions and never accept that there is only one solution to the problem, to look always for other (hopefully) new alternatives.

We believe that giftedness is not intelligence alone but includes emotional maturity and social involvement as well.

We do it by challenging the intellect, the emotions and the social potentials through workshops on topics in exact-, life-; humanistic-, social sciences and arts:

Life and Exact sciences: aeronautics, astronomy, electronics, introduction to science, evolution, electricity, science fiction, computer sciences, space sciences, mathematics, physics and chemistry, modern physics, the mystery of human brain, cloning, etc.

Humanities and Social Sciences: archeology, economics, hieroglyphs, humor, political thinking, leadership and responsibility, judicial thinking, journalism, psychology, philosophy –logics, social thinking, Judaism, chess, bible stories, science of persuasion, etc.

Arts: art of speaking, art and science, drama, cinematography and video, creative thinking, creative writing, drawing and sculpture, graphics, games with words, model building, nonsense, puppet theatre, photography, etc.

The approach in all the workshops is to challenge creative and interdisciplinary thinking.

We work not only with the child, but with his parents (lately also with grandparents) and his teachers as well, in order to help them to understand and to challenge the child's uniqueness without isolating him from his peers.

We believe that giftedness is the responsibility of the parents. The personal example they give to their children is the best educational factor in the development of the gifted child.

More than 35,000 gifted children attended our programs. In our follow-up research, on those who participated in our enrichment courses 30 years ago, we learned from their answers that many of them not only act according to their potentials but achieved recognition in their fields (science, technology, army, etc.)

Another very important aim of our work is to involve the gifted in the present possibilities and problems of our society; to challenge and strengthen the children's whole personality thus preparing them to act in the future as creative, gifted, involved and responsible adults.

By teaching and challenging the gifted children today we not only prepare them to react to decision-makers but, hopefully, give them tools to act and make decision themselves for their own good and a creative future of our society.

Our enrichment program is also applied in three other locations: Rosh Ha'ayn, Lev Ha'sharon and Tel-Mond. For more than 30 years we had worked in culturally deprived parts of Tel-Aviv, Bat Yam , Nethania and others, but unfortunately we could not get the subsidy of the establishment for the last three years.