NOVGOROD THE GREAT
ROCHESTER’S RUSSIAN SISTER CITY AT 1150 YEARS

Monday, November 30, 2009
Unitarian Church of Rochester
220 S. Winton Rd. [map]

Lilacs for Rachmaninov

This newsletter features news of the many activities Linkages has sponsored in the past several months. The activities are related to various Partnerships as well as to the major celebration this year of the 1150^th anniversary of the founding of Velikiy Novgorod.

I have been encouraging people to sign up to receive email from Linkages.  Of course, the signup page was broken.  Apologies to anybody who tried to sign up.  The page is now much improved.  It has a "submit" button now.  Maybe you could try again?  Click here to sign up.

The following were left at the August 20 picnic.  Two paring knives : one 3-inch and one 4-inch.Stainless steel cutlery - all the same pattern - two forks, one teaspoon and one soup spoon.  Contact us to claim them.

We received a report on the Hanseatic celebration, just a few days ago, in Novgorod.  If the history of the Hanseatic League has slipped your mind, here is some help from Wikipedia.  Our reporter is Oleg Demidov.  Many more photos are here.  (I am partial to the Hanseatic Biker League, myself)

Jed Metzger and Debra Fromm-Faria (one of our newest board members) are taking a group of graduate students to Novgorod June 14-22.  Some of the travellers will be blogging on the Nazareth website, here.  It is already apparent that the students are looking forward to the trip.  You can follow along if you like.

SEPTEMBER 13- 24, 2009

[CLOSED  - Deadline was June 1]

Linkages of Rochester, Inc., invites you to join this special Anniversary Celebration Tour to Russia for

stays and sightseeing in Moscow, Novgorod and St. Petersburg.  The Tour will feature 2 full days of historic and cultural activities, performances and exhibits presented for the official 1150th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of Novgorod, the “Father of Russian cities”, in 859 AD, viewed by Russian historians as the birth of the Russian state. (Here is the city's program schedule).

The City and citizens of Novgorod have invited Linkages’ members and interested friends from Rochester to join them in what promises to be a joyous spiritual, cultural and political event of national and international significance.

The official Rochester Delegation for the Novgorod 1150^th Celebration will be accompanying the Tour group. Membership in Linkages is not required to join the Tour.

Special thanks are due to Linkages members for their generosity in the 2008 annual appeal. Linkages members have typically been very supportive of the organization and in spite of the economy this year was no exception. Not surprisingly, many not for profits are reporting serious challenges in fundraising in this difficult economic environment. On behalf of the Board of Linkages, I extend sincere thanks to all who contributed.
 

The Partnership for Children has sponsored a number of professional exchanges since its formation in 1998. The early trips to Russia by American child welfare professionals and to the US by their Russian counterparts focused on how to set up a foster family care system. As foster families were recruited, trained and a foster care system took hold, our Russian colleagues began asking for dialogue about more advanced ideas in social work practice with families and children in crisis. In 2004 two professors of Social Work from the Greater Rochester Collaborative MSW program, a unique graduate program jointly sponsored by Nazareth College and SUNY Brockport, traveled to Novgorod to conduct a seminar on the most current ideas on working with families. The multi-day seminar was attended by about 30 psychologists and school personnel who work with families. Since that time several Russian child welfare staff have come to Rochester but an American presence in Novgorod has been lacking. In June the same two professors, Debra Fromm-Faria and Jed Metzger (a member of the Linkages Board and chair of the Partnership for Children) will return to Novgorod, again to meet with professionals. This time they will train on a nationally researched approach to working with families that emphasize making use of internal family resources and strengths as the engine for family healing. This approach may be especially useful in Russia where public resources to support families in their struggles are extremely limited.