Click for Photos from the visit
Following a lot of planning and coordinating procedures, the European president elect finally arrived in Israel. At her request, meetings with all the clubs in Israel were arranged, excluding Tel Aviv club which is temporarily non-active.
Mariet landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday 8.3.2007 at 02:30 am. She was picked up by Ella Raz from Ramat Gan club to her home. Afternoon we came over to Ela's place - Hava Inbar from Hasharon club and myself. Together we continued on to Shula Gildner's place from the Ramat Gan club.
There we met up with 13 other members of their club for a pleasant meeting. Each club member told us about herself and her activities within the framework of her club.
At the conclusion of the meeting Mariet shared her experience with us - she is married, has three grown sons and is the owner of a company that translates and writes cinema subtitles. Mariet has been a club member in her town Zvolle, an hour’s drive from Amsterdam, for the last ten years and has served as Club President and as President of the Holland Union. At present she is the President Elect of the European Federation and will preside from October 2007 to 2009.
Mariet's agenda for her presidency is "Water" - a popular issue for us as Israelis - "too much, too little, too polluted". This topic affects most federation countries, for example: Holland suffers from floods and invests in drying up its land for agriculture and housing.
Israel and its neighbouring countries suffer from lack of water and are constantly looking for alternative sources. Eastern European countries have sufficient water supply, however the water is polluted and undrinkable.
Out of 12,000 clubs in 66 federation countries, Mariet hopes that at least one hundred projects under this issue will be carried out. She promised a prize which will be given to the most successful project at the Annual European Conference, Amsterdam 2009.
An additional issue Mariet brought up was enlarging existing clubs, mainly by adding new and young members. Hopefully the above issues will flourish in the future.
On the following Friday, Mariet was picked up by Eti Redler from Ramat Gan club, on route to Jerusalem to meet with ten members of the local club. They strolled along the Sherover Promenade and completed the day with Shabbat dinner at Eti's place together with other Soroptimist members.
On Saturday Alia Kedem from Rehovot club, Joan Avigur from Beer Sheva club and myself escorted her to Taibe, where we met up with the Taibe President Naja Juma and her daughter who assisted with the translating from English to Arabic. We visited the Amal school in Taibe, where we met with teachers who seemed interested in joining the Taibe club. We continued on to Husaima Jaber's supporting club members to promote their projects helping children at the Schneider hospital. Later on that day we met up with Dvora Kaplan and seventeen members from Tivon and Nahariya clubs, in Tivon. Several interesting projects were discussed including a book collecting and selling project.
On Sunday we spent a wonderful day at Hahula Lake, a feeding and protecting bird sanctuary. Pnina Evental, a photographer from Givatayim club, Shaul Segal and his wife joined us for a fascinating tour around the site, at no cost. We continued up to the north border (Misgav Am) showing Mariet how close we are to Lebanon and Hizbulla.
Our next trip was to Haifa, meeting Yudith Yanai from Neve Shaanan club at her house. That evening we met 25 members of the three Haifa clubs at Lea Galor’s home. We heard about the history of the first Israeli club in Haifa, founded by the late Professor Rachel Shalon.
On Monday morning we left Nahariya to meet up with Nili Sander from the Rehovot club where we spent the whole day, visiting an Ethopian migrant women’s club - run by the local Soroptimists and other volunteer groups. We enjoyed a coffee roasting ceremony and tasted their ethnic dishes. At Silvia Flower’s house we celebrated Zdenka’s 103rd birthday, who was one of the club’s founders. Following a tour at the Weizmann Institute we proceeded on to Nili's house for a meeting with sixteen Rehovot and Rishon members.
Tuesday was devoted to a visit to Beer Sheva with Tikva Merom and Batya Tal who took us to visit the Club for the Blind, supported by Sorroptimist members. We continued on to a Club for the Mentally Handicapped, which is also assisted by the Beer Sheva club members. We met with six club members who took us to the train station.
Mariet went on to Tel Aviv, where she was picked up by Tamar Sofer, Hasharon club member. In the evening there was a meeting with thirty members from Givatayim and Natanya clubs, taking place at Nili Zonshein's house.
On Wednesday Tamar and Mariet went to Kibbutz Ein Shemer, where they met Nili Daniel from Pardes Hana Carcur club and myself to visit the Ecological Greenhouse.
We were the guests of Zevik Shafir, head of the Menashe Council Department of Education and Einat Salem, in charge of women's rights.
The Ecological Greenhouse operates on the basis of recycling water - ground - sun in a closed cycle - minimizing loss of energy. On location vegetables are grown in economical conditions, mainly in pools, fertilized by fish pond scraps from nearby pools. All these vegetations are strictly biologically run. The research there involves young scientists and agronomists who work side by side with industrial manufacturers and investors for future development. Another interesting aspect of this project is the fact that Arab and Jewish students from the area work together proving cooperation between them.
We continued to Menashe Resevoir, a purifying sewage center, used for agriculture watering approximately 3000 dunams of corn and potato fields. Another site of this kind is being built to cover all the Krayot area. After this exciting visit we traveled to Pardes-Hana where we met about 20 members of their club and also Hofit.
On Thursday, the last day of Mariet's visit, we traveled to Natanya, where we visited the Neve-Hadar school and saw the project of the Sharon club - a large mosaic wall, made by the school pupils, theit teachers and members of the club. After a moving meeting with some of the children and their teachers we drove back to Tel-Aviv to Dvora Sobel's house meeting with 15 members of the Hasharon club.
I would like to point out, that all the refreshments at the meetings were made by club members and were of the highest quality.
At every meeting, Mariet was presented with a small gift made by members of organizations supported by us, or a certificate of a tree planted in her name.
From the Israeli Union Mariet got a certificate of 10 trees planted in the Women's Forest.
For Mariet this was an impressive meeting with our members giving her first hand insight and information on the problems of our Union. She was amazed by the amount of voluntary work done by our members outside of Soroptimist framework.
For me, this was an opportunity to meet with many of our members and discuss problems pertaining to Soroptimist.
For me it was a good way to communicate with Mariet and share in her outlook and ideas. I hope, that the fact that we could discuss problems on a personal level will even improve our communication with the European Federation.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all Sorooptimist sisters of the Israeli Union who so willingly helped to make this visit a success.
I wish you all a happy holiday.