Ort Conference Adopts Social Aid Program for Students Overseas

The two-day national conference of the Women’s American ORT concluded here today with the adoption of a program of supplementary social assistance to ORT students, likened to the “G. I. Students Bill of Rights.” The program will provide food, clothing, comfort needs and, in some instances, shelter for its students in nine of the 19 countries in which ORT schools are located.

Canteens providing one to three meals daily are to be set up at all schools in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, Iran, Greece, Italy, and at the Strasbourg School in France and the Munich DP School in Germany, as the initial phase of the new program. Approximately 10,000 students will be immediately affected by this program.

“Heretofore, ORT confined its activities exclusively to the vocational training per se of dislocated and uprooted Jews,” said Mrs. Leon Bader, national guardianship chairman, in her report to the conference. “The responsibility for meeting the social needs of the students requiring such aid devolved upon private and governmental agencies. However, the dissolution of the IRO and the trend of curtailment of allotments by private agencies necessitates in certain instances the institution of a system of supplementary aid as a means of assuring continued study of thousands of ORT students.

“We have learned a great deal from the ‘Students G. I. Bill of Rights.’ That magnificent program views as inseparable training and subsistence of those in training. If this concept obtains for the United States, how much more valid is it for the terribly depressed areas of North Africa and the Middle East. Students who cannot maintain themselves economically, who are unable to satisfy their most rudimentary needs, cannot fulfill their obligations as students, ” Mrs. Bader pointed out.