•

"It is … our duty as scientists to promote education, rational thinking and tolerance. We should also encourage our educated youth to become technological entrepreneurs. Those countries that nurture this knowhow will survive future financial and social crises. Let us advance science to create a better world for all."
Professor Dan Shechtman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2011, and member of World ORT’s Academic Advisory Council in Israel.

•

"I think education is the fundamental component to South Africa being able to become a successful nation. Education should not be based on race, class, gender or ethnicity and ORT has ensured that people from all walks of life are afforded an equal chance for a better tomorrow.”
Johnny Clegg, musician and anthropologist.

•

"Throughout the world, ORT schools provide a modern educational environment in which young people learn to appreciate time-honoured general values as well as get connected to Jewish values. The cutting edge technological orientation brought in by ORT positions Jewish schools at a much higher level, thus providing them with an ability to attract the generation who may otherwise remain unaffiliated."
Natan Sharansky

•

"I have had occasion before to remark on the fact that ORT's activity does not base itself upon 'charity' but upon self help. Both for the work of rebuilding human lives and the great task of building a new nation in Israel, the acquisition of skills assumes an enormous importance. I want to assure you of my greatest admiration for the cause in which you are so nobly engaged."
Albert Einstein

•

"Your vocational training activities … represent a constructive activity on a people-to-people level which deserves approbation … You are engaged in a work of great humanitarian significance. Yours is the type of meaningful program which transmits skills and technical knowledge as an aid to the modernization of communities and to the improvement of living standards. It is thus in consonance with the main currents of our times."
President John F. Kennedy

•

"…ORT has provided an education for life to Jews and others in vulnerable communities throughout the world. In so doing, it has exemplified one of Judaism's greatest values. We are the people who predicated our very existence as a people on education, on 'teaching... diligently to our children.' … The civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome have long since disappeared. Judaism still lives and flourishes and survives. ORT is testimony to that truth.”
Lord Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

World ORT News

Mission accomplished! World ORT supporters visit Moldova and Ukraine  >
< Tackling poverty in Mali with World ORT’s help
08 Nov 2011 14:42 Age: 190 days
Category: News Update, Special Update, FSU

New ORT school set to be biggest in the FSU

SPECIAL BULLETIN   The largest Jewish high school in the Former Soviet Union is set to be established in the Moldovan capital, Kishinev.   Following a warm meeting between top World ORT lay leaders and management and Moldovan Prime Minister Vladimir Filat, more than six months’ preparatory work by World ORT Representative in the CIS and Baltic States David Benish has been given the seal of approval.   “I very much appreciate ORT’s contribution to my country,” Prime Minister Filat said. “I know ORT’s reputation internationally and I support every decision, every step, it takes in Moldova.”   His Government has provided a 4,000-square-metre school in the centre of Kishinev which will not only be able to comfortably accommodate all the students from ORT’s two existing schools in the city – ORT Herzl Technology Lyceum and ORT Rambam – but will also have plenty of space to increase enrolment.

David Benish (centre) explains the educational value of robotics to members of the World ORT Mission, from left: Director of the European Day of Jewish Culture in Switzerland Nadia Guth Biasini, ORT France President Lucien Kalfon, Sir Maurice Hatter, Lady Hatter, World ORT Director General and CEO Robert Singer, Mayor of the Lower Galilee Moti Dotan.

“When the ORT school in Kishinev opens, it will be the largest Jewish school in the Former Soviet Union and one of the largest in Europe. We are extremely excited about this,” said World ORT Director General and CEO Robert Singer.

The potential to expand is critical to the prospects of the 35,000-strong Jewish community’s children, who are already being attracted to the ORT schools in greater numbers. This year, the Kishinev ORT schools’ enrolment increased from 642 to 719 because of the high quality of the education on offer – ORT Herzl, 80 per cent of whose graduates win university scholarships, is the only Moldovan school chosen by Microsoft for one of its international educational initiatives.

“The only buildings available for these schools in the 1990s were former kindergartens which don’t have the design and facilities our teenage students need,” Mr Benish. “The new building is 20 years younger than the ones we use at the moment and has a sports hall, laboratories and rooms which can be readily adapted to suit the needs of a modern, growing high school committed to excellence in scientific and technological subjects. And it will enable us to meet increasing applications for enrolment.”

Classes from ORT Herzl will start to move into the new school in January with ORT Rambam students making the transition from about April. Members of last week’s World ORT mission to Kishinev and Odessa, which was chaired by World ORT President Emeritus Sir Maurice Hatter, have committed themselves to attending the new school’s opening at the start of the new academic year in September.

“Creating this new school generated a lot of excitement among mission members and prompted financial commitments from Sir Maurice and Lady Hatter, ORT Moldova President Ilan Shor and British ORT Trustee Simon Aron,” Mr Benish said.

The merger will also allow benefits accrued by ORT Herzl over a decade of investments through World ORT’s Regeneration 2000 and 2004 campaigns to be shared with the students at ORT Rambam.

“ORT Rambam joined our network only two years ago and the international economic crisis has made it difficult for us to raise the funds necessary to make the desired improvements,” said Mr Benish. “Being together in the same school will mean that the strides we have taken in raising standards at ORT Herzl will be shared, as will the benefits from our current QUEST campaign.”

Mr Shor, who became ORT Moldova’s president in 2009 at the tender age of 22, was deeply touched by Sir Maurice and Lady Hatter’s proposal to name the new school after the national organisation’s inaugural president, his late father, Miron.

“I’m very happy about this project; it will be a fitting tribute to my father’s ideals,” he said.   

World ORT Mission members Sir Maurice and Lady Hatter, ORT France President Lucien Kalfon, European Day of Jewish Culture in Switzerland Nadia Guth Biasini, Lower Galilee Mayor Moti Dotan, and British ORT Trustee Simon Aron spent five days in Ukraine and Moldova to see the impact of ORT’s projects there.

As well as the ORT schools in Kishinev, they toured the new computer centre at Odessa’s Tikva Orphanage and the Ukrainian capital’s ORT School and Technology Centre.

 

<- Back to: News & Media