Six Israeli students with intellectual disabilities earned bachelor’s degrees from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University on Wednesday evening through the school’s Empowerment Project, making them some of the only people with such disabilities to do so, according to the university.

The six graduates who received multidisciplinary bachelor’s degrees in social sciences are: Ruti Bar-Or, 46, from Jerusalem; Tomer Gad-Barak, 35, from Petach Tikva; Hofit Gilad, 41, from Ramat Gan; Henia Greengarten, 42, from Kfar Saba; Oded Naftali, 34, from Rishon Lezion; and Lior Shmualevitz, 35, from Hod Hasharon. Their disabilities include Down syndrome, Williams syndrome and cerebral palsy.

“To date it is believed that only three additional [similarly intellectually disabled] individuals in the entire world have reached this milestone,” the university said in a statement. 

The Empowerment Project, which the school says is the first of its kind, was created more than a decade ago by professor Hefziba Lifshitz of Bar-Ilan University’s education department.

Lifshitz said the idea was based on her theory that chronological age, as opposed to mental age, plays a key role in determining the cognitive ability of adults with intellectual disabilities. According to Lifshitz and her colleagues, intelligence in intellectually disabled individuals reaches its peak at around 40-45 years old, providing a window of opportunity for additional meaningful education that can enable them to develop and maximize their potential later in life.

“These students have succeeded in breaking stereotypes, shattering the glass ceiling and against conventional wisdom graduated for the first time, obtaining a degree after 10 years of study,” Lifshitz said at a pre-graduation event. “The goal has been reached and you have achieved it.”

The Empowerment Project now serves 120 adults with all levels of intellectual disability, from mild to profound, though only the most academically capable students are able to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Lifshitz told eJewishPhilanthropy that when she came up with the idea for the program, she decided to start it without significant funding support to first prove that it was viable.

“I knew that people wouldn’t believe in me if I came and asked for money for something that didn’t exist anywhere yet, and so it was,” Lifshitz said. “I scratched out some money from here and there [to start the program].”

In 2014, the program was awarded the Ruderman Prize in Inclusion, which came with $50,000.

“When we received the Ruderman Prize with $50,000… [Shira Ruderman] said, ‘You didn’t ask for money to begin with. You started. You proved it, and only then you asked for money. And that is very important,’” Lifshitz said. “People saw our project and were impressed, and in that way we were able to get funding.”

In addition to the Ruderman Family Foundation, the funders of the project are: the Joan S. and Leon Meyers Family Foundation, the Melina Charitable Trust, the Lois Alberto Machado Chair for Research on Cognitive Modifiability at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Education, Sano, AFI Properties, Aroma, Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, Michlol Finance, Ltd., the Bank of Jerusalem and the family of the late Dr. Yitzhak Kandel of Kfar Saba, Israel, as well as some anonymous donors.

The graduation ceremony for the first cohort of Empowerment Project students was attended by Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog, who lauded the graduates as “six exemplary characters with cognitive versatility who are full of courage, determination and a great soul.” She also commended Lifshitz and the director of the project, Shoshana Nissim, “for the courage and faith to realize an impressive and challenging vision. Every such opening brings forth air and light, and every such path has the power to contribute to those who walk it, and to society as a whole.”

“When they visited us at the President’s Residence about two years ago, I asked them to invite me to their graduation when the day came,” Herzog recalled in her speech. “At that time, I thought it was an incentive to focus on the future and thus strive towards it a little more easily. But today it seems that the ‘fantastic six’ — who are here at the end of a beautiful and awe-inspiring chapter that they experienced together, and each one separately — didn’t exactly need incentives.”