It won’t come as a surprise to many that there is a great divide between European countries when it comes to issues of gender and opportunities for women. While some countries have a high percentage of female participation and a relatively impressive number of women in executive level positions. The European Union has set a goal to achieve an employment level of 75% amongst women in the EU and some nations like Sweden, Denmark and France are making this goal a reality.
Unfortunately, there are also many European countries in which the institutionalized oppression of women and overt sexism is nothing short of staggering. In places like Ukraine and Russia, depriving women of basic economic and social rights as well as access to education is just one of the abhorrent human rights violations happening today, but one American organization is changing that.
For over 135 years, the international organization World ORT has been bringing education to those in need all over the world, in large part, thanks to the fundraising efforts of the U.S. branches of the organization. Now, they are turning their attention to women in the Baltic States. Understanding that education is, in many cases, the basis for building a better, more secure, more promising future, World ORT collaborated with Project Kesher to found and fund a groundbreaking initiative focused on expanding employment opportunities for women living in the former Soviet Union. Through a network of training centers, this program drastically improves the employment prospects of women by offering hands-on information and communication technology (ICT) education, something most of them would never otherwise have access to.
To date, over 30,954 women have completed programs at the 16 ORT-KesherNet centers currently operating in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Single mothers, refugees and destitute women on the verge of homeless are just a few of the type of individuals that ORT-KesherNet programs actively support and successfully help to secure gainful employment through education.
ORT-KesherNet is now poised to begin a new phase of its operations in order to meet the changing employment prospects in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In this new phase, ORT-KesherNet centers will not only focus on teaching ICT skills but also the development of business management skills. This new objective directly addresses the growing importance and increasing number of opportunities for people in these regions to start their own business. This is a trend that has been slowly growing over the years but which has gained new impetus since the beginning of the recent global recession.
