November 2007

Germany has WIZO groups in 9 cities.
In Munich, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Hannover and Hamburg the Aviv members are part of the main WIZO group and do some projects alone.

For instance, in Frankfurt, where the annual WIZO Bazaar is held in November, Aviv members have two stalls: one with second hand children’s clothing and one with second hand toys.

Once a year, for Purim, the Aviv group organizes a LUNA (amusement) park with various activities for children, including a tombola (raffle for toys and games), and different things to eat and drink.

Three Aviv members from Cologne attended the last WIZO Aviv International Seminar in Israel. Afterwards they were very motivated and decided to establish a WIZO Aviv group. One of their projects, started two years ago, has just been completed:

A new WIZO Germany cookbook entitled “From Avocado to Zimmes”.

In Berlin there has been a WIZO Aviv group since August 2006, when it was founded by nine young women. They organize small cultural events, like visits to museums, with which they also want to recruit new members. Stuttgart also has a new WIZO Aviv group, and one of its members also attended the 2006 WIZO Aviv International Seminar.

One of WIZO Germany’s biggest problems for the future is to recruit active young members for WIZO, especially young women who are willing to commit themselves to building new Aviv groups. They are of the opinion that there are different reasons for these difficulties. One of them is that the present generation does not have the strong feelings for Israel as previous generations had. Secondly, many of these women are working and they are intensely involved in their professional lives, so they have no intention of spending their free time on voluntary work on a regular basis. WIZO Germany chaverot hope to share new thoughts and ideas in order to overcome this problem.

Based on the report submitted by
Jenny Sommer
WIZO Germany