Recently, we had a visit by the Deputy Foreign minister of El Salvador.

Margarita Escobar, in charge of strengthening the ties between the Home land (in this case, El Salvador) & their Diaspora (especially in North America)

El Salvador has many similarities to Israel in terms of the size of the country, the number of citizens & the percentage of El Salvadorians living outside the country.

This is the reason she decided to come learn from us on how to develop better relations between the two groups.

Partnership 2000 Beit Shemesh - Mateh Yehuda - Washington - South Africa was recommended to her as a Partnership with a lot of activity.

The Partnership staff was very excited & proud & saw this as a wonderful opportunity to share experience & information.

The Deputy & her escorts, visited the Partnership 2000 office where they met with the director Gideon Vennor & the representative of the South African community, Mrs. Mickey Blumberg & heard about the various activities. From there they continued to two preschools that participated in the Early Childhood Education exchange: Gan Calanit in Kibbutz Tzora & Gan Vradim in Beit Shemesh.

Margarita wouldn't leave Kibbutz Tzora without a short visit to the Tzora Winery where she bought local wine & olive oil.

The next stop was at Ziona & Nissim Levy's Gallery in Zafririm, where she heard about the Ella valley artist, the women's empowerment program & had an Ethnic Curdish meal.

Margarita was very impressed by our area & the Partnership 2000's activity.

She was extremely moved from everything she saw & all those she met.

She felt she has a lot to ;earn from here & wants to return here & even send some people over to learn in depth.

Noa Roth, Project Director, Center for International Migration and Integration (CIMI) wrote:

"Dear Mickey,

I wanted to thank you and your colleagues at the Mateh Yehuda office for the wonderful visit you arranged for Ms. Margarita Escobar, the Deputy Foreign Minister of El Salvador.  We were inspired and impressed by the partnership, the different projects we saw and your commitment to the development of the Mateh Yehuda region. 

Thanks again for an excellent visit,

Noa"