[5] ORT's current operations are in Israel, the former Soviet Union (including the Baltic States), Europe, Latin America, and South Africa.

[6] ORT also runs International Cooperation programs and supports non-sectarian economic and social development in underdeveloped parts of the world, with vocational training and the provision of technical assistance.

World ORT raises funds through its membership organisations in different countries and through the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).

The second partition of Poland in 1793 had resulted in a sharp increase in the number of Jews in Russia, so that in 1794 Empress Catherine the Great decreed that the majority of them would henceforth be restricted to living and working in the Pale of Settlement.

After the reforms of Tsar Alexander II in the 1860s, the situation improved for some Jews but those in the Pale remained trapped by economic hardship and dismal conditions.

Permission was granted and the appeal was sent out, signed by Poliakov and de Gunzburg as well as Abram Zak, Leon Rosenthal and Meer Fridland, leading to the establishment of the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor among the Jews in Russia.

Using its international ties, the British branch of ORT purchased a school building and dormitory in the Moabit quarter of Berlin.

[12] Vocational training centers were set up in 78 DP (Displaced Persons) Camps in Germany, and nearly 85,000 people acquired professions and the tools they would need to rebuild their lives.

In the early 1990s ORT returned to the former Soviet Union and the Baltic States, where it now serves 27,000 students in 58 schools and educational institutions every year.

The educational services provided through their network continues and has now been supplemented by programs intended to deliver basic nutrition, clothing, books and school supplies, counseling and other services designed to meet the growing emotional needs of students as well [15] In addition to technical and financial support for its network of schools and programs in more than 30 countries around the world, ORT has in the past run campaigns including: