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 mentorship, and a mini-grant.
Announcing the 2016 COJECO Blueprint Fellows!
Meet the FellowsThe BluePrint Fellowship brings together a select group of Russian-speaking Jewish artists, intellectuals, and innovators 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 thus shape 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
View AllGUIDING 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
107Projects continuing beyond their Fellowship year
37New Jewish non-profit organizations resulting from BluePrint projects
5Fellows who became Jewish professionals or lay leaders
36People engaged by BluePrint Fellowship community projects
10,000+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 in a public launch event.
PROGRAM DETAILS
The BluePrint Fellowship begins with a weekend retreat on 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.
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 his or her community project. The average grant awarded is $3,000.
Fellows are matched with distinguished coaches, experts in the field of each participant’s project, who work with them one-on-one to help them further their own creative goals.
Each fellow is likewise 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
For the 2015-2016 BluePrint Fellowship cycle, preference was 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 was given to community project proposals in the following areas:
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New mediums for informal Jewish education among RSJ (e.g. games, multimedia, animation, etc.)
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Israel engagement
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Russian-Israeli community
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Volunteering, Philanthropy & Fundraising
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Family & Children educational workshops
Blueprint fellows
Ronit Levin Delgado Blender Bodies
Yevgenia Nayberg "The Secret Society" A Russian Language Picture Book
Mark Gurevich The Yiddish Old and New
Zhenya Lopatnik Yiddish-Tish
Ekaterina Schaltuper Handmade Charity
Tatyana Levina Ghost of The Ancient City
Michael Drob Stateless
Kate Balandina When I Grow Up (Little Odessa)
Blueprint Fellowship Alumni
Alumni Projects
View AllSpeak Memory
Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Tanya Levina is a Brooklyn based painter. Her artistic inclinations showed at a very young age as she started compulsively drawing on every surface in sight including books, walls and papers around the house. As she grew older, Tanya gave up defacing household property and started using drawing and painting as an outlet for documenting surroundings and expressing affection for things she liked, especially horses. To this day horses remain a dominant theme in her work. Tanya often sets her subjects in extremely colorful, exaggerated and slightly surrealistic settings, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, travel experiences, as well as works by Dali, Klimt and Monet. Her artwork can be found at www.tanyalevina.com
Aside from painting, Tanya studied Economics at Brandeis University, and after a couple of stints at various strategy consulting firms landed as a Research Manager at Scholastic.
Yuliya was born in Moscow in 1979 and graduated from RGGU with degree in IT in 2001. She moved to New York, along with all my family: my parents, my 84 year old grandfather, two of my 83 year old grandmothers, our dog, our cat, a violin, a guitar, my father’s bike and sewing machine that same year. Ever since she can remember she was interested in the link between the photo and a story, but she got serious about photography only 9 years ago. I currently reside in New York and work as a professional photographer. See her work at www.ylevit.com
Nadya Meykson and Victoria Schwartzman plan to make a recoding of contemporary Russian-Jewish emigre composers. The recording will include works that are rarely heard and which they feel deserve to be introduced to a wider audience. The recording will be followed by two public concerts.
Nadya Meykson moved to the US in 1996 from Moscow. She holds a Master’s Degree in Music from the Eastman School of Music. She has performed in venues such as Weill Recital Hall at the Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center, The Bohemian National Hall, The State Kremlin Palace Concert Hall, All-Union House of Composers in Moscow and The Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.
Nadya has appeared as soloist with OSSIA Orchestra, Shoals Symphony Orchestra, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra and Alabama Youth Symphony Orchestra. She has won various prizes, including Concert Festival, Noel Levine, First Prize at Ray Dunmyer Youth Concerto Competition, and First Prize at Shoals Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition.
Irina Sheynfeld is an artist, illustrator and designer born in Odessa, Ukraine, where she studied painting at the Odessa College of Art. Upon arriving to New York, Irina earned her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts. She worked as a designer and illustrator for The Wall Street Journal, Time Warner and Oxygen Media. For several years Irina illustrated a weekly column for Editor and Publisher magazine. Irina just had her first solo show at Tagine Gallery in NYC and her work could be currently seen at Amsterdam Art Gallery and at Iridium Jazz Club. She was one of the winners of the Printmaking Completion and recipient of the New Media Award for the best web design.
Inheritance of a Story
Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Tanya Levina is a Brooklyn based painter. Her artistic inclinations showed at a very young age as she started compulsively drawing on every surface in sight including books, walls and papers around the house. As she grew older, Tanya gave up defacing household property and started using drawing and painting as an outlet for documenting surroundings and expressing affection for things she liked, especially horses. To this day horses remain a dominant theme in her work. Tanya often sets her subjects in extremely colorful, exaggerated and slightly surrealistic settings, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, travel experiences, as well as works by Dali, Klimt and Monet. Her artwork can be found at www.tanyalevina.com
Aside from painting, Tanya studied Economics at Brandeis University, and after a couple of stints at various strategy consulting firms landed as a Research Manager at Scholastic.
Anya Roz is an artist, photographer and designer residing in New York on the Spanish side of Harlem, was born and raised in Moscow in an eclectic family of artists, musicians and photographers, learning to live in the middle of a self generated art scene – visual material being the source of both self exploration and collaboration.
Anya says, “Although I have worked in mediums ranging from oil to video, and had made a living as a graphic designer for the past ten years in New York, my work has focused on photography and painting, and finding a unique visual link between the two mediums. I have also explored lots of antique archival photographs, using their digital replicas in my collage and mixed media work.”
Yuliya was born in Moscow in 1979 and graduated from RGGU with degree in IT in 2001. She moved to New York, along with all my family: my parents, my 84 year old grandfather, two of my 83 year old grandmothers, our dog, our cat, a violin, a guitar, my father’s bike and sewing machine that same year. Ever since she can remember she was interested in the link between the photo and a story, but she got serious about photography only 9 years ago. I currently reside in New York and work as a professional photographer. See her work at www.ylevit.com
Handmade Charity
Ekaterina Schaltuper was born in Moscow in 1986. She received a bachelor's degree in Economics and Marketing in Russian State University named after G.V. Plekhanov. She started her career at the age of eighteen as an account executive at a British PR company MMD. After graduation Ekaterina started working for a restaurant group "Novikov Group", doing brand management for eight leading restaurants in Moscow. She immigrated to New York in 2008 where she got involved in the fine jewelry industry for several international brands. Currently Ekaterina works for a consulting company Mega Projects as a Sales Director for nine emerging jewelry brands. Outside of professional interests, Katya is learning to play piano and vocal, she travels widely and enjoys living with her husband Mark.
Ekaterina was born in Moscow, Russia in 1987. After graduating from university, she continued her career in the finance sector. Ekaterina started working in a Big 4 company and got experience in Russian oil and gas sector. She continue her career abroad and moved to Switzerland, where she worked in a multinational company. During these years Ekaterina has travelled all over the world with her new job, from the US to South Africa and China, and has also worked a lot in many European countries. At the beginning of 2014 she moved back to Moscow, working for an IT company. Ekaterina and her husband now live in New York.
The BluePrint Fellowship is generously sponsored by
UJA-Federation of New York and Genesis Philanthropy Group.
For more information
or if you have any questions, please e-mail
Lisa Klig, COJECO Program Director at:
