WASHINGTON — Two national Jewish organizations that are teaming up to fight domestic violence in Russia recently received a federal grant to help in their efforts.
The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchanges gave Jewish Women International and NCSJ — Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia — $130,000 to undertake a 15-month women’s leadership training project on domestic violence in two Jewish communities in Russia.
Domestic violence is a “pervasive problem” in Russia, and very few services for battered women even exist in the country, according to Diane Gardsbane, JWI director of programs.
By targeting the Jewish community, the plan is to create a “model for community action” that can spread to other religious and ethnic communities, she said.
Gardsbane notes that “religious and faith-based groups [in the United States] have been extremely effective in creating social change and being of assistance to victims” of domestic violence.
Earlier this week, Gardsbane and Lesley Weiss, NCSJ’s director of community service and cultural affairs, were scheduled to head to Tula and Voronezh — Russian towns containing 2,000 to 3,000 Jews each — to select eight community and religious leaders who can be effective organizers on domestic violence issues within the Russian Jewish community.
Weiss said that the Russian Jewish Congress and the women’s leadership and training organization Project Kesher will assist the pair in selecting people who are already active in the Jewish community and interested in working to combat domestic violence.
The chosen eight will be brought to the United States in January for an intensive 2-1/2-week training course in three communities: Baltimore, Cleveland and Richmond, Va. The participants will work with domestic violence experts and community organizers in trying to address the needs of their local communities. JWI also is adapting and translating its resource guide on domestic violence for rabbis for the project.
Gardsbane said that once the eight trainers are provided with information, it will be up to them to decide “appropriate responses” back home.
“What will work…is part of what this group has to figure out,” she said. “They will be leaders in trying to create some strategies as victims [of domestic violence] come forward.”
Gardsbane said by the end of the 15 months, she hopes that the two areas could hold community-wide seminars on domestic violence, and start the process of training other ethnic and religious groups to become active on the issue.
Weiss said this project fits perfectly with the NCSJ’s mission of helping facilitate programs that “further democracy and promote the safety and security of the Jewish community” in the former Soviet Union.