Granddaughter of Leeds-born founder of WIZO, Rebecca Sieff, visited Leeds to offer inspiration to the organisation’s members.
Flying in from Israel only days after the atrocities, Micaela Ziv, granddaughter of Leeds-born founder of WIZO, Rebecca Sieff, visited Leeds to inspire members with her family’s history. She told a story of pioneering women, travelling alone to British Mandate Palestine in 1919, to see for themselves the living conditions of families, and what the most urgent problems were. They saw that women needed to be empowered and support themselves by learning new skills such as agriculture and creating baby homes for orphaned or abandoned babies. This led to the establishing of Israel’s social welfare system itself.
Rebecca founded WIZO federations around the world, as well as finding the courage to travel to Berlin in the 1936 and 1937 to rescue Jewish children. Her legacy, the empowerment of women and social justice, lives on today in modern WIZO, continuing to fight for policy change and new legislation.
With over 250,000 members in 50 countries worldwide, WIZO is now the largest social welfare organisation in Israel, helping vulnerable and disadvantaged Israeli citizens, regardless of age, race, or religion, to become self-sufficient and contributing members of society.
Wizouk.org