March 29, 2007 US Ambassador visits ORT centre in Minsk The US Ambassador to Belarus, Karen B Stewart, has visited the ORT Technology Centre at the Marc Chagall Institute in Minsk. The National Director of ORT Belarus, Professor Anatoly Grinberg, gave a presentation of ORTs activities in the country, past and present, as well as an explanation of the ORT Technology Centres role. The Ambassador noted the importance of ORTs historic, as well as its current, role in providing Jewish and technology education in Belarus, Professor Grinberg said. Professor Grinberg presented Ambassador Stewart with a copy of The Hope and the Illusion (www.ozet.ort.spb.ru), the history of World ORTs role in the Soviet Unions attempt to set up an autonomous Jewish Russian homeland before the war. She was very impressed, he said. Opened in May 2002, the ORT Technology Centres situation in the Marc Chagall Institute places it at the heart of the National University of Belarus. The Centre provides design courses for university students as well as advanced computer technology courses for pupils and training opportunities for teachers at the Bialik School, the only state-funded Jewish school in the country. Ambassador Stewart, centre, at the ORT Technology Centre. There are plans to upgrade the technology centres facilities and expand its role as part of World ORTs Regeneration 2004 campaign, through which ORTs educational network in the CIS and Baltic States is reaching out to more Jewish communities in the region. Together with a planned new science and technology centre at the Bialik School, the modernised centre at the Marc Chagall Institute will enable ORT to provide science and technology education to all Jewish students in Minsk from elementary school through to graduate level. Thanks to the support of American philanthropists Norman Seiden and Milton Gralla, the ORT Technology Centre will become ORTs training and IT support centre in Minsk, ensuring the smooth and efficient running of the network by coordinating professional and educational cooperation between ORT Minsk and other Jewish schools and centres with the ORT regional network. Upgraded computers and computer laboratories, as well as the installation of additional multimedia projectors and presentation equipment, will allow the ORT Technology Centre to update its study programmes and introduce new vocational courses. After an enforced absence, World ORT returned to Russia, the country of its birth, in 1991. It now coordinates operations in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Kyrgyzstan 53 projects in 32 locations serving more than 27,000 people. World ORT is the worlds largest Jewish education and vocational training non-government organisation and has benefited more than 3 million people Jewish and non-Jewish in 100 countries since its foundation in 1880.