BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — The Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project will announce at a meeting in Buenos Aires its first Spanish-speaking subsidized trip to Israel known as “Birthright for Moms.”
The group is holding the meeting Monday and Tuesday in the Argentine capital as part of its new focus on Spanish speakers. Some 100 Spanish-speaking women from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Brazil and Miami, Florida, are participating.
“We chose Buenos Aires because of the magnitude of the local Jewish community here,” Galia Rubinstein, who oversees the project’s Latin American partnerships, told JTA, “and also because we have seen a very significant impact by local Argentinian Jewish women who have gotten increasingly active in the Jewish community after our MOMentum trip to Israel and we want to strengthen and replicate that experience.
“Latin American women need greater skills, support and tools to rise as leaders and face the challenges of living in a culture that has not nurtured female leadership. Our strategic focus now is in the Spanish-speaking world.”
More than 150 women from Argentina, Spain, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and Colombia are expected to take part in the MOMentum trip to Israel — an eight-day, highly subsidized trip for Jewish mothers with children under the age of 18 living at home. The Israeli guide and teachers will all be Spanish speakers.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is partnering with the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project in bringing the women on these educational trips.
“We had 20 women from Argentina in Israel in May, we will bring another 22 in November,” Ruth Baars, the group’s program director, told JTA. “By the end of 2017, we will have taken 170 women from Argentina since 2013.” Baars is in Buenos Aires to lead the conference.
MOMentum trips have brought nearly 1,000 women from Latin America to visit Israel.
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