Ukraine Clash Tests a Far-Flung Women's Network

Ukraine Clash Tests a Far-Flung Women's Network

(As the fighting drags on, Project Kesher leaders in the region are keeping lines of communication open among their members in the face of divisive media reports. By Skype, email and phone they tell each other what's going on.)




(WOMENSENEWS)--Imagine a huge family of women spread over thousands of miles in countries throughout a continent. After decades of regular communication, members suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter political conflict. There is shooting, bombing, accusations and denials, outrage and fear and massive dislocation. Refugees are fleeing from one region to another. This is the situation for members of Project Kesher, an organization that trains primarily Jewish women in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and Israel to take on leadership roles in their own cities, where they have spent years building interfaith coalitions to advocate for the safety and status of women and girls.

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"This is simply war. Really war," says one Project Kesher leader, a refugee from the conflict.
What the Project Kesher network of women has going for it is a shared language and shared goals, and the tools of the internet. For 25 years, members have been working together to build a civil society. Twenty-five years ago they had to rely on sparse and expensive telephone connections and take long train rides to get to face-to-face meetings, but now they are connected daily through Skype, email, social media and internet meet-ups.

In November, two young mothers, core leaders in Project Kesher, came to the U.S. to meet with their American counterparts.

Vlada Bystrova Nedak, a Ukrainian, is Project Kesher's director of international programming. Irina Sklyankina, a Russian, is its international coordinator of Jewish education. They've worked closely together for years, and now they talk about the fracturing of their world. They are shocked and angry and worried, but mostly, they're very busy holding their network together.



"By Skype and email and phones, we learn firsthand from each other the truth about what's going on in a city. And right from the beginning, we didn't need to urge Project Kesher women to reach out to each other on both sides. Without our pushing it at all, women called others in other cities, across political lines. They didn't need the staff to tell them; they know on their own that there has to be dialogue. We have to hear each other," she says.

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http://womensenews.org/story/war/141219/ukraine-clash-tests-far-flung-womens-network