As part of the Pre-School Educators program, Partnership 2000 Beit Shemesh-Mateh Yehuda-Washington-South Africa of the Jewish Agency is connecting kindergarten children in Beit Shemesh-Mateh Yehuda with children in Washington! This is the program's second year, during which a group of kindergarten teachers from Washington visited the Region. In December 2007, kindergarten teachers from the Region visited the group in Washington. The program was a huge success, both with respect to personal ties created and the interaction on a professional level. Currently, the program is close to completion and as a result the two groups decided on a joint final project - a connecting quilt! When the proposal was approved, no one had any idea of what the final result would look like. The idea was that each child in the kindergarten of a teacher in the program would take a square of cloth and draw his vision of the State of Israel in its 60th year. And that's how the project got started. Each kindergarten teacher took the work very seriously. Some of them worked with the children in the kindergarten and others were assisted by parents. When we received the finished quilt from the children of Washington - we were astounded! It included about 300 amazing squares! About 400 squares made by the children of Beit Shemesh-Mateh Yehuda were added to these!

The kindergarten teachers in the project from Beit Shemesh-Mateh Yehuda met one evening to connect the two quilts. We met in one of the large halls of Kibbutz Tsora and spread out all the squares in order to join them together. After several hours of hard work, the amazing final product exceeded all expectations. A 6x6 meter patchwork quilt containing about 600 squares!!! At the end of May the connecting quilt will be presented at the opening of the 60th anniversary events in Washington and then will return to Israel to be exhibited in our Region.