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"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.

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"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.

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"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

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"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

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"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

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"…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

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17 Mar 2011 00:00 Age: 1 year
Category: News Update, IC

World ORT reaches from here to Timbuktu

World ORT has brought its international expertise in "training the trainers" to the sub-Saharan country of Mali, one of the world's 25 poorest nations.   It has started work on a one-year, $1 million project funded by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to identify and select more than 500 people to be trained in the art of passing on their work skills to others.   Working in partnership with ID-SAHEL, a local consultancy specialising in social development, as well as Mali's National Directorate of Vocational Training and Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, World ORT's contribution to the country's Programme for Vocational Training and Professional Insertion (PAFIP) marks a cultural breakthrough.

World ORT's Daniel Kahn (left) meets Michel Faye, Projects Director for programme funder LUX-Development, Kaita Fatoumata, National Director of the Malian Directorate for Professional Training, and Chiacka Sogoba, CEO of local patner ID-SAHEL, in Segou.

"It's not easy because there's not a tradition of apprenticeship here and people feel threatened that, if they have a good student, they will suffer from competition later on," said Daniel Kahn, Head of World ORT's International Cooperation office in Geneva, who has spent the past week in and around the Malian capital, Bamako, meeting with partners.

World ORT has brought in three experts from Canada, Benin and Burkina Faso to join two local specialists whose task it is to prepare questionnaires to be taken to the nearly 700 candidates personally to assess their skills, way of life and aptitude. They will be accompanied by support staff for the interviews. The project will see the institution of standardised, recognised vocational qualifications.

"Based on the information gathered we need to prepare 50 definitions of professions and develop the training accordingly," Mr Kahn said. "This is pedagogical training, teaching a range of skilled people - including blacksmiths, carpenters, farmers, electricians, computer technicians - how to train others. It will change the whole approach to the employment of youth and of preparing the next generation."

Later this year, World ORT hopes to follow up with a further project to train 51 national supervisors to oversee the performance of the new cadre of "master craftsmen" and who would, as Mr Kahn put it, continue the training of trainers of trainers.

The project is being implemented in Segou, which is 200 kilometres from Bamako up the Niger River in the direction of the historic city of Timbuktu, and Yorosso, about 300km south-east of the capital.

The need to develop practical measures to help the mainly Muslim country is obvious. Some 80 per cent of Mali's labour force works in agriculture and economic activity is largely confined to the area irrigated by the Niger River, with most of the country classified as desert or semi-desert. The former French colony has an unemployment rate of about 30 per cent and more than one-third of its 3.2 million people live below the poverty line.

World ORT's project is an important part of PAFIP, a five-year national development programme, and Mr Kahn is optimistic about the contribution it will make.

"Everyone is involved in highly motivated," he said. "We're dealing with professionals and that's encouraging. We definitely feel that we are accomplishing something important here. It's a region of very old traditions, very few services and very poor people and we feel that this project will bring positive change."

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