Shining Lights

Religious Education Prize Laureate for 2016- 2017: Ms. Bella Even- Chen

Ms. Bella Even- Chen, an educator and pedagogic instructor in the field of counseling at the Elkana Campus is one of the Religious Education Prize Laureates for 2016-2017.

Ms. Bella Even- Chen, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, immigrated to Israel after WWII. She earned both her BA and MA Cum Laude from Bar Ilan University with a triple major in psychology, sociology and education. At age 18, while pursuing her academic studies, she was sent to Kfar Haro’e to study English. Even at that young age, that very year, she developed innovative and unique methods in Language Arts instruction, and served as an educational advisor.

Possessing a clear and creative persona she developed and enhanced the “tool box” used by educational consultants dealing with dozens of subjects, such as intervention or prevention programs, which through her, was made accessible to the various educational systems countrywide.

At the same time as she was bogged down with a heavy workload within the educational system, she was very successfully involved both in print and electronic communications and journalism. Many of her broadcasts on Arutz-7 and “Kol- Chai” radio were dedicated to the issues of education and culture. She served as a member of the “Theater Prize” and the repertoire committee. She has also volunteered in several organizations such as “Enosh,” “Ezer M’Tzion,” and the “Israel Cancer Association.”

In the prize committee’s reasoning for awarding Bella with this prestigious prize they stated that: “Bella believes that experiencing something is the basis to all learning and that that process is an important one which “burns the discs” of the brain and the heart more so than the results”.