COJECO

The Council of Jewish Emigre Community Organizations (COJECO) was established with seed funding from UJA-Federation of New York to provide a united voice for New York's Russian Jewish émigré community. COJECO is an umbrella organization, which unites 43 organizations active in such areas as lobbying on behalf of émigré veterans and the disabled, Jewish education for children and families, leadership development, and cultural programming for Russian-speaking Jews.

GPG funding makes it possible for COJECO to expand Project Gesher, which trains Russian-speaking Hillel students as informal Jewish educators. Students work with Russian-speaking Jewish children in kindergartens and schools on a weekly basis. The program affects two groups of young Russian-speaking Jewish populations, as it provides young children with the fundamentals of Jewish history and culture, and cultivates a new generation of Russian-speaking Jewish educators and leaders in North America.

GPG is also providing a grant for the expansion of COJECO's Center Without Walls (CWW) initiative, a project funded by the UJA Federation of New York.