Women's Stories

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WE Center for STAR Women

WE provides technical support, business training, and access to microcredit loans to refugee women in San Diego.

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Yevgenia Nisman, a refugee from the former Soviet Union, has been able to start a music school with help from the STAR Center.

A WE STAR Center Client with a Musical Future

For as long as Yevgenia Nisman can remember, music has been her passion. Since she began teaching at age 15 in the Soviet city of Uzhgorod, music has been her livelihood. Today, with help from the STAR Center, music is her ticket to personal independence.

Yevgenia, who now goes by Jenny, is an accomplished pianist who had a flourishing career in her native country. But when the Soviet Union dismantled, persecution of Jews intensified, and she and her husband lost their jobs. In 2001, after her son Artur was taunted at school with anti-Semitic slurs, Jenny moved her family to La Mesa to begin a new life as refugees.

“I'm lucky God gave me a chance,” she said. “It doesn't matter whether you are Muslim, Catholic, or Jewish, we all have the same God, and He opens his notebook every day and knows what's going on with everyone.”

Jenny is fluent in five languages ("I'm a musician, so I hear language"), and she loves teaching music as she was taught. Her lessons began at age 4, and in the Russian tradition, she was steeped in music.

To re-enter her profession in America, Jenny took a course in music fundamentals. Under the mentorship of another Russian émigré, music teacher Hanna Cogan, Jenny began by teaching music theory.

With an initial WE grant of $500, Jenny purchased music books for an array of age groups and signed up for a year's membership in the California Music Teachers Association. She now has 19 students. She is applying to join the National Piano Guild, and with a loan from the STAR Center, she plans to open her own studio and buy an electric piano to augment her acoustic piano.