Chaim, a 17-year-old student from Ashdod, “takes charge of his life,” according to his SPACE coordinator. He is a dedicated, responsible student who is not shy about taking initiative and asking for help. Despite his independent spirit, Chaim faced some academic challenges in 9th grade, and he joined ENP’s SPACE Program because his teacher saw that Chaim might benefit from some extra help and advocated for him, asking the program if he could join. He smiles as he remarks that he greatly enjoys his SPACE class, which consists of him and another engineering student who is also named Chaim. The most important thing that the program has done for Chaim, according to his teachers, is give him validation. If Chaim hadn’t received encouragement and good feedback from his SPACE teachers, they believe that his stellar academics would have slipped. Being in SPACE also improved Chaim’s performance in school, allowing him to move up from 3-points math. 

Chaim’s strong will and self-sufficiency are apparent when he talks about his passion for electronics, which, he says, stems from the fact that understanding how things work and knowing how to fix them empowers him to be independent. Chaim is currently channeling this passion towards the goal of the prestigious Atudah program for engineers, in which he will first earn an engineering degree at the Technion and then enter into the army as an engineer. Chaim’s teachers say that he is the ideal positive representative of the SPACE program because his participation shows the other students in the school that SPACE is not just for struggling students, but rather that smart students can benefit immensely from it as well.