The Netanya Sewing Centers have had a real good winter. We started off the cold season with a donation of three lovely sewing tables from the ladies of The Inner Wheel, Netanya. This gave us space to add more students to our group in Kiryat Nordau and to get everyone sewing in earnest for the winter. In fact, all of our groups have grown this winter and we have many more students, including working men who come when they're 'off-shift'.

Our next task was to find warm material for them to sew with and, once again, Polgat in Kiryat Gatcame to our assistance with a huge batch of winter suit material and other warm fabric. What a good time all our groups had. Today, you can walk around Netanya and see "Polgat Suits" wherever you look - and made very smartly, too.

We also received a shipment of denim material from Polgat which has enabled our more advanced students to sew many more bags of all sizes for the ESRA Embroidery Project. Tomer has even designed and sewn his own invention - a two-pocketed purse which is really smart and handy.

Polgat have now passed us another large batch of material to enable us to get ready for our "summer collection" and, judging by the material, it's going to be a smart summer. Not only have they promised us material whenever we want it, they have even thanked us for enabling  them to participate in this "blessedproject". And we thought the age of chivalry was dead.

Two volunteers came to us from the shores of Canada. Anita and Rachelle came to Netanya last year on an organized volunteer trip and were so happy with the sewing centers that they have come for a two month period on their own this year to spend their time volunteering in our sewing centers as well as in other places. We've been really lucky to have them and hope we'll see them next year, too.

We were invited to give a talk to a group of American and Canadian volunteers on the Ethiopian aliyah in Netanya and ESRA's participation. I took four of our students with me and after giving an overview of ESRA in Netanya, I opened the floor to the students who told their personal aliyah stories. It was a very emotional and interesting evening for all the participants.

The Netanya Community TV came to video our centers and we've all become TV stars!

We now look forward to an exciting summer and anyone who'd like to be 'suited' out with an original summer outfit is welcome to visit our centers in Netanya.