camp machanayim or michlelet?

Michlelet is an ncsy summer program for girls that is a lot like seminary. There is 4-5 hours of learning a day in the form of speakers, chaburas with madrichot, and there are some teachers that work for other seminaries during the school year that teach some classes as well. There is a big mix of girls from all different backgrounds ranging from public school girls to bais yaakov girls, they are all very good girls. I went two summers ago and had an amazing time!

Its based in Yeshivat Reshit, in Ramat Beit Shemesh, so the dorms are really nice and you don’t have to worry about staying in hotels every night and packing everything up every morning. Although we do plenty of traveling as well. I think that if you haven’t been to Israel before on a touring trip that if possible, you should do one first, or you can even extend your stay by either flying in early and spending a few days touring and staying by family or friends and then joining the program when it starts or you can stay after a bit longer so that you can do more touring as well because although they go to the really important tourist areas, they don’t go to all of the ones that a more touring type program would go to (I went on a two week touring trip at the end of eighth grade, so I was fine with doing less touring and more learning).

The staff are really nice and I had amazing madrichot and I still keep in touch with a few girls that I was there with. Although I only knew two people before the summer started, I was able to make a ton of friends and I found that it was a great oasis from being in public school all the time (I ended up transferring to a bais yaakov type school for 12th grade two weeks after the program ended, but since I didn’t know that until after I got home, I found that it was amazing to be making friends for the first time in my high school career and feel like I was normal, which I never felt in public school).

NCSY gives very generous need based scholarships for people who have been involved very involved in ncsy before they apply to the summer program they want to go on. I also found that the federation was very helpful with me as well. And (since I tend to have a lot of success raising money for Jewish experiences) I ended up raising with NCSY and the federation combined, more than I needed to pay for the price of the program in scholarship money.

Like any high school israel experience, even though you have already paid the sticker price on the program, there are still other shopping expenses that would not be covered by scholarships that you need to take care of before going (I feel like, and keep in mind that I am not wealthy so I am just saying this for information and not for the sake of saying everyone can afford everything because I know that is not true at all) which if you stay home for the summer would end up needing to be taken care of anyway such as food, sunscreen, bathing suits, and other things that you would need to enjoy your summer at home, which if you stayed home would be absorbed into your family’s expenses, but at the same time cannot be neglected when deciding to participate in a summer program (i have had throughout my fundraising career to justify why I needed full scholarships if, by staying home, my mom would have to buy me food to eat and since I can’t just sit around and do nothing, money for entertaining activities, like going to a museum…).

I don’t know anything about camp machanayim, but I would definitely recommend michlelet and you should definitely take all that information into account when deciding which program to do on.

Check List:

Federation

Shul

Your NCSY region

National NCSY

NCSY Torah Fund

Set up a website

Get babysitting jobs

Speak to your rabbi

Ask other girls that went before

Save money (like birthday money)

That is all I can think of right now.