On September 27-29, 2013, a seminar of the international Jewish women’s organization Project Kesher, which is a part of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, was held in Minsk. The seminar gathered 23 participants - women leaders from 12 Belarusian Jewish communities.

The seminar involved economical and legal literacy, discussing primarily teaching children economics in traditional Jewish families and planning the family buget. The meeting with a legal advisor was particularly important.

Many of the participants noted that the seminar gave them a number of new useful skills for working together in the community.

At the end of the seminar, the participants had found new ways of working together and had created a number of projects to be implemented in their women’s groups.

On September 23, 2013, the Kineshma municipal administration hosted a round table on problems of inter-cultural, inter-ethnic, and inter-religious communication. The round table was initiated by the chairman of the local Jewish community and the leader of the Project Kesher women’s group Lyudmila Shlyundina. The activists of Project Kesher and the local Jewish community have been devoted to promoting inter-ethnic tolerance for years. Their work with partnering organizations included women’s group meetings, workshops for youth, teachers, and librarians, and developing and adopting a municipal program for fostering tolerance.

The participants of the round table discussed preventative measures against extremism, religious and national bigotry, and mechanisms to create stable inter-ethnic and inter-religious relationships.

An important result of the event was a decision to develop a tolerance program for the schools of the city and to creatre a Tolerance Center, possibly hosted by the central library.