For more than 65 years, ORT Netherlands has been supporting educational projects for children on an international scale.
Maimonides Jewish Community School in Amsterdam affiliated with ORT in 2019, the same year it was ranked as northern Holland’s number one school.
ORT Netherlands’ fundraising initiatives have supported major programs, including the Future Leaders Program, the ORT school in Sofia, and the installation of smart classrooms in Israel and Ukraine.
After the Second World War, ORT Netherlands provided training for refugees from Eastern Europe and Dutch survivors, including many hundreds of orphans and Jewish children with learning difficulties. The number of students grew quickly across the Netherlands and ORT organized courses in woodwork, bookbinding, and clothes cutting and sewing. For most of these early students, the Netherlands represented a short stop on their way to other destinations – mostly in Israel.
From 1948, with the increase in emigration to Israel, the number of ORT students in the country started to decline.
From the mid-1980s until the early-1990s, ORT briefly supported teacher training programs in robotics, establishing a high-tech robotics laboratory at the Technology Institute of Eindhoven and translating some of ORT’s learning materials for use within Dutch schools.
Ukraine
ORT Ukraine supports more than 7,000 students across five ORT schools, two ORT-affiliated schools, and eight non-Jewish institutions around the country.
Brazil
Escola ORT – the ORT school in Rio de Janeiro – is ranked as one of the best institutions in the city, and across all of Brazil.
Latvia
The Dubnov Jewish School in Riga is the only Jewish school in Latvia. It joined the ORT network in 2010.