Sapir Academic College has been active since 1963, is located in the Western Negev, less than two kilometers from the border with Gaza, and is integrated into its surroundings and is an academic, economic, cultural, social and technological anchor in the Negev. The campus offers a rich variety of innovative services and programs, centers of excellence, a center for entrepreneurship and innovation, identification of global trends and a groundbreaking innovation program that provides students with the knowledge, skills and practical experience to develop their ideas for business or social technological entrepreneurship.

About 8,000 students participate in academic and professional programs every year in a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs. The college also offers courses for engineers and a professional development center that offers many training courses for professional advancement and professional conversions. The college employs about 1100 lecturers, in diverse teaching and research fields in the life sciences, technology, spirituality and society. About 84% of the students come from the southern periphery of Israel, 24% of the students from the Bedouin and Arab community, about 66% of the students are women; And 22% of the students have disabilities, also 11 students are new immigrants and 54 students from the Ethiopian community.

The college has strategic partners recruited to operate the innovation center on campus, including the Crown Fund – Impact Entrepreneurship Program, the Ness Fund and the Y.K.A. Fund. Sapir is a major employer in the region today and is a growth engine that contributes to the development and resilience of the Western Negev economy, security and society. The 11th (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) Center in Sapir is the innovation and entrepreneurship center of the college, connecting the world of academia and students to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial challenges and a meeting of businessmen, employers and local entrepreneurs with the students. At the core of the activity is a groundbreaking annual program, which includes eight innovation and entrepreneurship laboratories, which Development of projects of students, lecturers, college employees and residents of the area together with partners from the industry. The laboratories are managed by the academic departments and are focused on different content areas. Alongside the laboratories, clinics operate: marketing, financial, software house and legal practice, which act as consulting companies and provide to the development teams in the laboratories and for external ventures professional support in their field of expertise. “Chai Bessapir” is a kind of ecosystem containing various platforms: study tracks, social entrepreneurship, accelerators, connection interfaces with local businesses, mentors from the industry, communities and management of entrepreneurship processes in local authorities.

The center also operates 14 point courses in innovation and entrepreneurship, which include reference to basic concepts in entrepreneurship, design and creative thinking, Story Telling, Lean start-up principles, patents, intellectual property, funding of start-up companies and more. A high rate of about 10% of the students at Sapir take part in the activities of the entrepreneurship and innovation center thanks to the college’s ideology that sees entrepreneurship as a profession and believes that the potential of graduates in the labor market can be maximized by strengthening their entrepreneurial DNA, skills and life skills. Every year about 170 participate in the program each, who germinate about 30 different ventures and about 10% of them develop afterwards and become growing companies and businesses. The program accompanies the entrepreneurs from the stage of cracking the challenge to the stage of demo and investor presentation, after which the leading teams move to accelerators in the area to continue developing the activity. Every year they are integrated into the acceleration programs Miscellaneous 3-7 projects In the last year, a laboratory was launched in the field of agri-tech in which about 15 participants, students and residents, 4 of them continue today in the development of the project.