20 January 2005 World ORT held a top level meeting with the Israeli Ambassador to London, Zvi Heifetz, this week. The meeting, which involved World ORT management and senior embassy staff, was designed to explore the potential for joint projects and areas of shared interest. It is one of a series of meetings that World ORT has had with ambassadors and other senior representatives in London of countries in which ORT has activities. Israel is the single largest country of ORT operations: ORT Israel has more than 90,000 students in 159 educational establishments. Some 25 per cent of Israels hi-tech workforce graduated from ORT. It was an excellent idea to have this meeting, World ORT Director General Robert Singer said. We were able to stress the worldwide scope of ORTs work as well as show how much our Israel network has to offer, for example in the integration of schools with industry. I hope the different departments in the Embassy will be able to benefit from the experience and expertise ORT has accumulated over the past 125 years. Mr Singer said the meeting agreed to establish a coordination team in order to establish future areas of collaboration, such as extending the current North American tour of Life in the Shadow of Terror (an exhibition of art by ORT Israel students) to Britain. The initiatives discussed at the meeting included putting ORTs educational institutions on the itineraries of British VIPs visiting Israel, making ORT a resource for Israeli students who are brought to the UK, and the Embassy helping to raise awareness of ORTs on-line Jewish educational programmes such as Navigating the Bible and Learning about the Holocaust through Art. Mr Heifetz said: I appreciate the warm reception that my senior staff and I received from World ORT. The important work that World ORT does for Israel and around the world in programmes, training centres and schools is invaluable and very well recognised. I believe the Embassy and this organisation, which already have a strong working relationship, will be able to contribute with each other in many areas in the future’.