Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev has inaugurated the national "Museums of the History of Development Towns" project, a joint initiative of the ministry and the Jewish National Fund, at a ceremony in the northern city of Migdal Ha'emek. Also taking part were representatives of the JNF and the directors of the Council for the Preservation of Sites and the Heads of Development Towns, in whose areas the other "Founding Houses" are to be built.
A ministry statement said the project was created "in light of the contribution of the first settlers in the 1950s and 1960s, who built the country from north to south and whose story is not told. The pioneers of the development towns, most of whom were refugees from North Africa, flourished the wilderness and turned the twenty-one development towns into large, well-established and developed cities." The first museums are expected to be built in the first half of 2018 as part of a pilot project to be held in four development towns throughout the country.