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✡ Preparations Advertising Feature 39

100 years of ministry for WIZO

IZO in the UK will celebrate its centenary year in 2018. The larg-
est independent social welfare organisation in Israel, the move-
W ment was originally established by women to meet the needs of
disadvantaged Jewish families in Palestine. Today WIZO spans five conti-
nents, with volunteers across the globe working to fund the 800 WIZO pro-
jects and programmes in Israel caring for all vulnerable and disadvantaged
citizens regardless of race, religion or gender.
Autonomous women’s Zionist and rural areas. They were shocked
groups existed across England from at the lack of understanding of basic
the 1890s onward, under the aegis of nutrition and childcare that they found
the English Zionist Federation. In 1917, among the women who were working
three women were elected to the Zionist alongside the men, often in malaria-
Federation in their own right: Rebecca infested land. Rebecca and Vera were
Sieff, Romana Goodman and Olga deeply affected when they saw im-
Ginsberg-Alman. Utterly frustrated migrant single mothers struggling to
by the Council which was dominated feed, clothe and care for their children.
by men, they decided to form a Ladies They also discovered women breaking Rebecca Sieff, who was deeply affected by
Committee. rocks to help make roads while their what she saw during a visit to Palestine
In this endeavour, they were joined children were left on their own all day
by Dr Vera Weizmann (wife of Chaim, in wretched lodgings. started up all around the world. Today
who later became Israel’s first Presi- The two women returned to the there are more than 50 federations with
dent), Edith Eder, Henrietta Irwell and UK fired up with plans for social and over 250,000 members, all with a strong
other Zionist women. After months welfare services, training in agricul- connection to Israel, to each other and
of very heated discussion, in 1918 the ture and domestic science, which they to tens of thousands of hands-on vol-
Council finally agreed to the creation of discussed in full and moving reports unteers in Israel.
the Federation of Women Zionists (now with their colleagues. The women laid True to the spirit and achievements
known as WIZO UK), and incidentally down the concepts of care for women of our founders, who were committed
still a part of the Zionist Federation and children that are still followed in suffragettes, an important part of our
today. WIZO’s work in Israel today. Henrietta work today in Israel is campaigning
At the end of World War I and fol- Irwell was a child welfare worker who for women’s rights. Specifically, pro-
lowing the Balfour Declaration, the played a large part in this. grammes exist for empowerment and
British Government sent a working Two years after the founding of the leadership for women and girls, legal
party to Palestine to look at the situ- Federation of Women Zionists, WIZO aid and advice, legislation and policy,
ation there. Among that group were – The Women’s International Zionist and reducing and treating domestic
Israel and Rebecca Sieff, the Weiz- Organisation – was brought into being violence.
manns, and the youngest of the four and operated from the same offices in Rebecca Sieff and her colleagues
Marks children, Rebecca’s sister Elaine London until Israel’s independence would surely have been proud to see
(later Blond). While the men looked at was declared, when WIZO moved to what their ‘Ladies Committee’ has
the financial and political possibilities, the newly founded State. In the inter- achieved almost 100 years after its
the women toured the collective farms vening years, WIZO Federations were inception.

WIZO’s work in Israel has developed into a network of 800 projects throughout the country
and encompasses a wide range of social welfare work which includes:
• 50,000 children in day • 53 community centres • 16 Warm Home • 40 support groups for
care centres and after • 2 secondary vocational facilities the empowerment of
school facilities schools • Groups for family teenage girls
• 5,500 students in • 2 shelters for victims of therapy • 70 support groups
schools and youth clubs domestic violence and • 900,000 meals a month nationwide for single-
• 175 day care centres their children delivered to families in parent families
• 8 community and youth • 1 old age people’s home need • WIZO early age hotline
centres • Legal advice bureaux • 15,000 calls received on to tackle parenting
• 6 youth villages attached • Activities for senior a dedicated domestic difficulties
to secondary day citizens abuse hotline • Trauma counselling
schools • Barmitzvah and • 5,000 women receive for victims of war and
• 70 single parent groups Batmitzvah ceremonies free legal aid annually terrorism in Israel