Sydney Australia, December 20, 2006
in March of 2006, the Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe of Sydney, Australia was the proud recipient of a small grant through the Sidney Myer Fund’s Education Small Grants Program. The project aims to design, establish and run a Sunday Russian Language Hebrew School for children of Russian migrants that were born in Australia.
The biggest wave of Russian migration to Australia occurred between 1987 and 1993. Of about 5,000 who came to Australia during that period most were young professionals aged between 30 and 40 with teenage children. Those children studied Russian at school and were able to do so with Russian textbooks as their command of the language was sufficient enough to keep up with the Russian school program.
Currently this group of Russian migrants have children of their own that were born in Australia and would like to keep Russian language and culture alive in their families. Presently there is no appropriate curriculum available for Russian language teachers to Australian children of Russian migrants. This project seeks to rectify this problem and take the first step towards developing a new generation of Australians who are proud of their heritage and are well-educated contributors to the Australian society.
