Ida Pruitt

Ida Pruitt (1888–1985), bi-cultural social worker, author, speaker, interpreter and 20th century contributor to Sino-American understanding.

Ida Pruitt was the daughter of North China Southern Baptist missionaries Anna Seward Pruitt and C.W. Pruitt. Born in 1891 in the coastal town of Penglai on the Shandong peninsula, her childhood was spent in the small inland village of Sung-ch’ia-t’an, where for many years the Pruitts were the only Western family.

After attending Cox College in College Park, Georgia (1906–1909), Ida Pruitt received a B.S. from Columbia University Teachers' College in New York City (1910). When her brother John died, Ida returned to China to be with her family and became a teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for Girls in Chefoo (1912–1918). In 1918, she came back to the United States and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia until hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York as head of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) where she remained until 1938.

During the Japanese occupation of China (1937–1945), Ida assisted Rewi Alley as he organized the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. The CIC was formed to organize cooperative factories throughout the countryside to support China's industry. Schools were built to train the Chinese (often crippled or orphaned) to work in and manage the factories. Indusco, the fundraising arm of the CIC in the United States, was formed, and Pruitt served as its executive secretary from 1939 to 1951.

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