Hamachanot Haolim youth movement was founded in 1926 by a group of pupils from Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, and was the first youth movement of pupils established in the Land of Israel.
Hamachanot Haolim founders were several adolescent boys and girls who felt the emptiness of city life and searched for new ways to engage in social activity, in pioneership and in realizing the values of Zionism in the Land of Israel. This group, that went out to work with and educate the youth throughout the country, slowly grew into a youth movement which over the years settled, established and renewed 41 kibbutzim in Israel.
Hamachanot Haolim currently operates about 50 chapters, from the Krayot cluster of cities in the north to Eilat in the south.
The youth movement aims to educate towards pioneering realization and action in the aim of narrowing gaps and building an equitable society in Israel.
Hamachanot Haolim is essentially a “youth movement of members”, which believes that the members must take upon themselves the responsibility to lead and shape the movement’s principles and to realize them. The youth movement maintains permanent member institutions which make the key decisions about its social-political way.
Alongside ongoing activity in the youth movement’s chapters, Hamachanot Haolim conducts regional and national seminars, as well as field trips, overnight camps and community projects. As part of these activities the members engage in content based on five principles which guide the Hamachanot Haolim worldview: Zionism, pioneership, humanism, socialism and democracy.
Pupils who graduate high school can defer their army service and participate with their group in a training year as part of the youth movement. At the end of this year they continue on to their army service, which constitutes part of the hagshama track (realization in Hebrew, a youth movement term referring to processes the members undergo in the aim of realizing their purpose, aspirations and values as they were educated in the youth movement, usually referring to the Service Year and Nahal tracks), and join mission driven-cooperative living frameworks as adults. (Shnat Sherut, Service Year refers to a community volunteer year in which the volunteers defer their army service by one year, and Nahal refers to a unique track that includes IDF service in the Nahal Brigade as a group after their Service Year. )
