The COJECO BluePrint Fellowship

The BluePrint Fellowship is a year-long program for Russian-speaking Jewish adults ages 25-40 to explore personal and collective identity through the creation of Jewish community projects, supported by group workshops, one-on-one guidance, and a mini-grant.

Please Stay Tuned for Information about Upcoming BluePrint Cohort

Cohort 2019-2021

The BluePrint Fellowship brings together a select group of Russian-speaking Jewish innovators, artists, and intellectuals, to explore the link between personal identity and creativity.

What does it mean to be Jewish for someone born in the Former Soviet Union and living in the United States today? The BluePrint Fellowship offers participants the opportunity to examine and explore this question on their own terms. Chosen through a competitive application and interview process, fellows are able to bring their ideas to life and engaged in this community-wide conversation.

BluePrint Community Projects

BluePrint projects from years past have been innovative initiatives that impact the Russian-speaking Jewish community and Jewish community at large in areas such as: arts & culture * media & technology * gender & sexuality * literature * education * environment * children and family life * social justice * philanthropy

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Yiddish-Tish

Zhenya Lopatnik

If You Were Jewish (Migrants Nation)

Vitaly Umansky

Kruzhok

Marina Mirchevskaya

Letter to God - A Staged Reading

Sergey Nagorny

Jewish Choices

Olga Khodosh

Central Park: An Original Musical Story

Dina Pruzhansky

GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF BLUEPRINT

Knowledge:
Offering fellows a deeper historical and cultural perspective on the Jewish people and contemporary issues of the Jewish world today, with a unique focus on post-Soviet Jewry through a series of informal educational experiences.

Inspiration:
Motivating participants to become more active members of the Jewish community through a personal connection to and familiarity with an array of projects, organizations, and approaches to Jewish community life.

Skills:
Providing fellows with the tools to develop successful community projects through hands-on professional workshops and peer-to-peer review.

Mentoring:
One-on-one mentoring guides Fellows in setting clear goals for project objectives, offers options for achieving desired goals and outcomes, and identifies possible resources that go beyond traditional methods.

Russian Jewish community projects created since 2008

140

Projects continuing beyond their Fellowship year

55

New Jewish non-profit organizations resulting from BluePrint projects

6

Fellows who became Jewish professionals or lay leaders

47

People engaged by BluePrint Fellowship community projects

13,000+

BLUEPRINT FELLOWSHIP REQUIREMENTS

  • Fellows must be Russian-speaking Jews between the ages of 25 and 40, residing in the NYC area.
  • Fellows must have an original concept for a community project with an explicitly Jewish theme and an anticipated impact on at least 50 people.
  • Fellows must participate in the program fully, including a three-day weekend retreat and 8 evening workshops, which take place monthly on weeknights.
  • Fellows must implement their community projects within the Fellowship year, including a public launch event.

PROGRAM DETAILS

The BluePrint Fellowship begins with a weekend retreat and is followed by monthly educational workshops,  where fellows meet other talented thinkers and social activists, gain a new perspective on the community’s historical context, and hone their project management skills. BluePrint sessions are designed to inspire and support participants through the development of their projects, while exploring new ways of looking at personal history and identity.

Future Fellowship Sessions: TBA
Location: TBA
Day & Time: TBA
Dates: TBA

Through a guided grant application and reporting process over the course of the program, each fellow is awarded a mini-grant of up to $5,000 for the implementation of their community project. The average grant awarded is $3,000.

Each fellow is paired with a BluePrint alumnus mentor who can offer guidance, support, and advice to a new fellow, having had firsthand experience of participating in this process.

Selection Criteria

Preference will be given to candidates with long-term vision and aspirations for their community project and their personal community involvement. While projects must be implemented within the the program year, the Fellowship should be viewed as a  launching pad for on-going endeavors.

Preference will be given to community project proposals in the following areas:

  • New mediums for informal Jewish education among RSJ (e.g. games, multimedia, animation, etc.)
  • Israel engagement
  • Russian-Israeli community
  • Volunteering, Philanthropy & Fundraising
  • Family & Children educational workshops

Cohort 2019-2021

Blueprint fellows

Current Fellows
Past Fellows

FRUJELI

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Ilya Khodosh Moscow to Manhattan

Ilya Khodosh is a writer and performer in New York. He was a company member of the storytelling/spoken-word show Birthright Israel Monologues, which toured nationwide. He was published in the anthology, “What We Brought Back: Jewish Life After Birthright.” He recently served as the Associate Artistic Director of the United Solo Theater Festival, the largest solo performance festival in the world, where he also premiered his second one-person show. A graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course, he is a regular contributor to the Berkshire Review for the Arts. He is also a freelance Russian translator and has written for Radio Free Europe. At Williams College, he was awarded the Hutchinson Fellowship for outstanding work in theater. Read Ilya’s blog.

Alice Kogan The Cheburashka Project

Alice Kogan was born in Moscow and immigrated to the US at the age of three. Her family settled in New Jersey, where they were embraced by the local American Jewish community, an experience that eased her family’s transition and introduced them to Jewish customs. She went to Dartmouth College where she studied Economics and History and traveled to Western Ukraine on a Hillel trip called “Project Preservation,” an initiative in which a group of students from diverse backgrounds restore an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe. After college, Alice worked in strategy consulting, corporate strategy and finance. She is currently pursuing her MBA at Columbia Business School. Alice is interested in human behavior and experience and the way in which both art and science can express and explain it.

Yelena Shmulenson Me and Ethel Rosenberg

Yelena Shmulenson emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1993 from Simferopol, Ukraine. She decided to become an actress instead of getting a real job, and now spends her life making silly faces. Her theater credits include five seasons with the Folksbiene, two seasons at the Ellis Island Theatre, “Enemies: A Love Story” in Russian, Frank (‘Klezmatics’) London’s musical of “A Night In the Old Marketplace”, and “The Essence: A Yiddish Theater Dim Sum”, which was a big hit in Sweden. On film, she was a spy in Robert DeNiro’s “The Good Shepherd”, she played Lady Capulet in “Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish”, she burned in “Fire At The Triangle” (PBS), and she fought a dybbuk in the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man”. She can be heard in the NPR radio drama ”The Witches of Lublin” (with Tovah Feldshuh) as Leah, the bass-playing Witch. She has also recorded several audio books, winning the Earphones Award for her recordings of “Train to Trieste” and Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” and “Rosa”. Recently she has appeared on Season Three of “Boardwalk Empire” (HBO) and "Orange is the New Black" (Netflix). She is fluent in five languages.

Vitaly Umansky If You Were Jewish (Migrants Nation)

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Blueprint Fellowship Alumni

“Collective Effort” Documentary Film by COJECO BluePrint Fellow, Leonid Gurevich

Save the Date: To be Announced

“The Collective Effort” is a captivating exploration of immigrant identity, Jewish identity, and the artistic identity of a creative mindset. This documentary, skillfully crafted by designer, editorial stylist, fashion photographer, and educator Leonid Gurevich takes viewers on a journey through the creation of a Dress made from fabric hand-painted by Jewish immigrants of various ages and social backgrounds.

From conception to the runway, the film weaves a narrative of unity, teamwork, and extraordinary results achieved through collaboration, while providing an insider’s look into the enigmatic world of fashion design.

The COLLECTIVE EFFORT Documentary features actress Sophie Van Haselberg, Lauren Ezersky – VOGUE’s iconic journalist, model-actress Marlen Fjeldstad, model and radio host Marina Novikova, Rabbi and author Tobi Rubinstein, and other prominent figures.

Click HERE for more information

The film is created with the support of COJECO as part of the BluePrint Fellowship Program.

Alumni Projects

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The Mountain Jews Cuisine: a cookbook

Yafo Mardakhayeva

Songs of Our Journey

Yaffa Borukhova

The Mountain Jews Cuisine: a cookbook

Lana Shalumova
The BluePrint Fellowship is generously sponsored by

The Genesis Philanthropy Group.

For more information

or if you have any questions, please e-mail
us at:

monicak@cojeco.org

Stay in Touch

COJECO was formed in 2001 as an umbrella organization for grassroots community organizations of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants in New York to make their voices heard and respected. Today we represent over 30 such network organizations, including young adult leadership groups, Holocaust Survivors, professional associations, arts & culture organizations, and social justice groups.

COJECO was formed in 2001 as an umbrella organization for grassroots community organizations of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants in New York to make their voices heard and respected. Today we represent over 30 such network organizations, including young adult leadership groups, Holocaust Survivors, professional associations, arts & culture organizations, and social justice groups.

Tel: 212-566-2120 E-mail: info@cojeco.org

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