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A half century of total identity with Israel, with Moetzet Hapoalot (Working Women's Council) with the aims and aspirations of the Jewish people throughout the world is being celebrated by the Pioneer Women movement.
Founded in 1925 by a group of Labor Zionist women of New York, led by Sophie Udin, the organization expanded and spread to 11 other countries. Responding to a letter from Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, for a loan of $ 500 to be used to dig a well for the Girls Farm School in Talpiot, Jerusalem, the group struck deep ideological roots into the soil of Eretz Israel and into the family of Moetzet Hapoalot. Adoping the name "Pioneer Women" as a symbolic link with the pioneering efforts of the women workers of Israel, they dedicated themselves to the building of a country based on democratic principles of equality and justice, to creating one people out of many and to fostering the progress of women from a position of help to that of self-help - from a condition of dependence to one of independence.
Beginning with Agricultural Training F rms for Girls, as far back as the '20s, the ever-expanding network of Pioneer Women/ Moetzet Hapoalot has increased to encompass the care of 22,000 children in 75 day nurseries, kindergartens, toddlers' centers and day-and-night homes; education and training for - 1 250 teen-agers in four dormitory agricultural high schools; career training for 2,B50 girls in 25 vocational schools - with courses from one to four years; special vocational courses for 2,400 women, the majority of whom are new immigrants; vocational courses, as well as social and cultural programming for Arab women in 35 centers; summer day camp vacations for mothers of large families and their young children; comprehensive community centers in 36 locales with facilities for day nurseries, cultural programs, classrooms, etc., which provide benefits for the entire family.
These services, including the recently initiated "Education for Family Life" program, which now consists of more than 50 clubs working with adolescent girls exposed to anti-social influences, and 64 guidance groups for mothers of large families, are concentrated mainly in development towns and lower class socio-economic city neighbourhoods.
Never deviating from the ideological foundation of the building of a country and the moulding of a nation, the services of Pioneer Women are rendered according to the needs of the population and in those areas where they would be most beneficial - not as a philanthropy but motivated by the Zionist ideal.
The sister relationship between Pioneer Women of the United States and Canada and later of Latin America and Europe, on the one hand, and the women of Eretz Israel and later Israel on the other, is unique. It was inspired and intensified by the
Many 'shlichot' of Moetzet HapoaIot who travelled to the cities of North America bringing Israel to them long before the State was founded, educating the women of the Diaspora to the problems and promise of a country and a people in development and making them feel as one in the building of the Land.
Five former National Presidents of Pioneer Women of the United States as well as over 1,000 members and their families, have come on Aliyah - a living testament to the special relationship of Pioneer Women to the Land and its people.
