COJECO has announced cohort VIII of the COJECO BluePrint Fellowship. 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.

Supported by the Genesis Philanthropy Group, BluePrint Fellowship offers 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. It motivates 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.

It provides fellows with the tools to develop successful community projects through hands-on professional workshops and peer-to-peer review. It also 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: 117
• Projects continuing beyond their Fellowship year; 42
• New Jewish nonprofit organizations resulting from BluePrint projects: 6
• Fellows who became Jewish professionals or lay leaders: 40
• People engaged by the BluePrint Community Projects: 12,000+

For more information about BluePrint and the current cohort, visit the COJECO website.