Israeli students give Palghar school facelift
PALGHAR: To celebrate 25 years of Indo-israel partnership, 40 students from College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS) — near Tel Aviv in Israel — painted a zilla parishad (ZP) school in Wada taluka, Palghar, on Monday. The students are on a 21-day visit to India and first visited Wada on August 16, said Liran Raviv, project coordinator.
In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited India to mark 25 years of collaboration between the two countries.
“Ours is a Marathi-medium school till Class 7. Israeli students are friendly and gelled well with the tribal students. At times ,they even shared their tiffin. Our students helped them in whatever little they could,” principal Sunil More said.
He added they were informed about the project in the first week of August. “We have been working on the project for the past four months and surveyed 50 schools across Mumbai Metropolitan Region with the help of education minister Vinod Tawde. We shortlisted the ZP School at Wada as it was an ideal spot and worked well for logistics. The local tribals extended their hospitality and looked after us well,” said Raviv. Accommodation and logistics were looked after by a local , Rohan Thakre.
The project is funded by the students, who contributed ₹1 lakh each, and the Israeli government (₹10 lakh), said project chairperson Lior Touvil.
“We painted the school building, classrooms, other structures and distributed stationery and clothes among students,” he added.
Yaakov Finkelstein, consul general of Israel, who accompanied students, said the Israeli government will help the Centre by signing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between top educational institutes of both the countries.
“In several Israeli schools, we teach Marathi. We are also training Indian teachers under the Teach India Programme,” he said.