As the Partnership 2000 reciprocal student delegations program enters its tenth year, we thought it would be interesting to talk to some of the graduates of the program. Sivan Yitzhak from Moshav Hazeva was a member of the 2000 delegation from the Central Arava to Australia.

Sivan's father Elan is one of the founding members of Moshav Hazeva, coming to the moshav in 1967 as part of his Army service in Nahal, the agricultural settlement branch of the Army. Her mother Celia, who came to the moshav as a volunteer during the Yom Kippur War, is a veteran Partnership 2000 activist, serving on a subcommittees, and has herself visited Australia on a Partnership delegation.

Sivan served in the air force as an air traffic controller, after which she spent the summer of 2005 as a counselor at a Jewish Agency summer camp in California. Sivan recently returned from a visit to the Far East and is now beginning her first semester at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, studying sociology, anthropology and literature.

Sivan is also participating in a program called the Open Apartment Program, in which she lives in an underprivileged neighborhood in Beersheva, and works with the people of the neighborhood. The program is run by a non-profit organization sponsored by the University, the Community Involvement Unit. Each student in the program receives free accommodations in one of the apartments, and in return, gives several hours a week to running activity groups and mentoring a family which they have adopted. Sivan is the coordinator for her neighborhood, and is responsible for 12 of the students in the program. The residents of Sivan's neighborhood are mostly of Ethiopian descent - below are three of "her kids".

Sivan has wonderful memories of her visit to Australia, and is sorry that the contacts have become somewhat spotty with time. She was delighted to hear about ALG (Arava Leadership Group) Co-chair Ron Finkel's initiative to contact all former delegation members and hosts, saying that she would love to take part. Sivan's younger sister Nili, who participated in the 2002 delegation to Australia, is also a potential candidate for this project.