"I can’t live
without my women’s group. It has transformed into the women's
center, which is open every day. Women come to us, not for a
handout, but because they want the programs…. We bring
in experts in women's health, and have roundtables about domestic
violence. We're always changing the topic of the group meetings.
Yes, I coordinate it all; I work with the city government and
other non-governmental groups. But I'm also a student."
— Nina Klotsman / Project Kesher regional
representative in Central Ukraine. Director of Jewish Women’s
Center in Cherkassy.
OUR
HISTORY
Project
Kesher founder Sallie E. Gratch and CIS Director Svetlana
Yakimenko are shown at an early organizing meeting
in Ukraine in the late 1980's.
Sallie and
Svetlana at the first organized women's meeting.
Sallie Gratch,
a social worker from Evanston, Illinois, was amazed both
by the depth of need in the communities she saw and by
the number of Jewish women she met who had no desire to
leave the country despite historic oppression during a
visit to the Soviet Union in 1987. One of these women
was Svetlana Yakimenko,
a teacher in Moscow.
On Sallie’s second visit, with Svetlana along as
fellow activist and translator, the pair discovered in
one town after another that Jewish women might live next
door to one another, yet be unaware of their connection.
These women expressed interest in getting together with
their neighbors to learn more about Judaism. From these
meetings grew the idea of Project Kesher women’s
groups, which have grown to take the lead in many areas
of civic engagement.
