Ort UK’s annual dinner this year raised more than £350,000 for aid for Ukraine.

An appeal film shown to the 200-plus guests at the Nobu Hotel in Central London demonstrated how the educational charity had shifted its fundraising efforts to support more than 8,000 Ukrainian students, staff and families from 15 training centres in 12 cities. World Ort has brought in around £2 million from its Ukraine relief campaign.

Up to half Ort’s Ukrainian students are now studying online, either at home or displaced within the country or overseas.

Its fundraising efforts have provided food aid, financial assistance, safe transport and other security support and emergency provisions such as sleeping bags and heaters.

Ort UK CEO Dan Rickman also encouraged guests to donate directly to World Jewish Relief, which had provided more than £200,000 of emergency aid to “Ort families in Ukraine fleeing their homes, desperately in need of food and medical supplies”.

The appeal film showed 23 Ort Ukraine students living in Israel at the Kfar Silver Youth Village, which World Ort Kadima Mada owns and administers. Their education focuses on Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) to prepare them for 21st-century careers.

Kfar Silver — which supports 900 students, predominantly from disadvantaged and challenging backgrounds — was described as a place where they “can learn to have fun again, begin to overcome traumas and where they can be optimistic about the possibilities of the future”.

The other focus of the dinner was Ort UK’s Jump programme, which mentors high-school students in their prospective career fields. It currently operates in 15 UK schools, seven of them non-Jewish.

Two graduates of the scheme, Yasmine Davidi and Avigayil Rowe, credited their mentors for the “invaluable, generous, and tremendous guidance” offered through regular communications and webinars.