Without a shadow of a doubt volunteers are the lifeblood of The Together Plan. Before the charity came to life in 2013, there were only two of us – myself in the UK and Artur Livshyts in Belarus. As we became a UK registered charity, our number grew to 5 with the addition of three trustees! Today we have 5 trustees, 60 volunteers and a sister charity in the USA. Our volunteers are truly international – based in the UK, USA, Israel, Canada, Belarus, the Netherlands and Greece.
Without our incredible volunteers we simply would not be able to do the amazing work that we do across our different project areas which help us to achieve our charitable goals.
Our mission is to support community revival in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with a specific focus on Jewish Belarus. We work through the lens of cultural heritage and we have initiated community projects on the ground in Belarus which are bringing people together to explore their own hidden history. This is proving to be a very exciting community building initiative.
Our other projects include the building of the Jewish heritage route through Belarus, translating and publishing books, creating digital collections, initiating and managing heritage preservation projects, sending humanitarian aid, and helping people to find their ancestral records in the Belarus archives.
Each of these projects are superbly run by our invested and valued volunteers. This month – The Together Plan exhibited and presented at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies Annual Conference in Philadelphia where we were promoting our Archive Search service. This helps people find their ancestral records in Belarus and it is run by a team of 7 valued volunteers.
So let’s throw a spotlight on two of our team to give a sense of what it means to be a volunteer at The Together Plan.
Carl Kaplan
Carl Kaplan – Senior Case Worker, Archive Services
Carl is our Senior Case Worker in the Archive Services team. Carl, located in Boston, approached us during the Covid pandemic to asking us to help him locate ancestral records in Belarus. Our search for Carl was successful beyond his wildest dreams and exceeded all his expectations. We traced family records back to the 1740s and found a criminal case against his great grandfather, Osher Kaplan who delivered Lipski beer taking it on his horse and cart from the brewery in Mogilev to the taverns in Minsk. Osher’s transgression was that he was caught breaching his licence selling a bottle of beer on the street in Minsk! We translated the case for Carl who was overjoyed with this find as was his extended family. Carl soon became a great friend to us at The Together Plan and so we invited him to join our team, an invitation he readily accepted. Today Carl is our very experienced Senior Case Worker in the Archive Services department. He plays a key role in the growth and development of the service demonstrating that we really do value and listen to our volunteers as they bring their ideas, personal experiences and expertise to the table. What’s more, Carl is continuing to discover more and more about his family in the archives in Belarus which we are all very excited about.
In Carl’s own words:
I volunteer for The Together Plan because it combines my interest in my family history from Minsk, along with supporting a cause that supports the Jewish community. As a caseworker the skills and strengths I built during my career in IT are a very good fit for The Together Plan. I also very much enjoy interfacing with people internationally. My volunteer experience has been very rewarding, especially when I see how excited people are when they get their research reports. At The Together Plan I have the liberty of suggesting strategy and new things beyond my daily involvement as a caseworker. I look forward to volunteering for many years.
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Sam Behrens
Sam Behrens – longstanding volunteer at The Together Plan
Sam has been volunteering with The Together Plan since 2015. His first volunteering experience was when he helped to plan and run a youth summer camp for Belarusian youth in Bobruisk, Belarus with a cohort of UK youth workers. Sam had never been to Belarus before and knew very little about it. His love of history and interest in the Russian language drew him in as he began to learn so much whilst building strong and lasting friendships with his fellow UK youth workers and with many of his Belarusian peers. You can hear Sam speaking about Belarus on his first visit in 2015 – click here. Sam has continued to volunteer with The Together Plan, planning and running subsequent summer camps in Belarus, working in the UK headoffice, doing in-depth research and helping at in-person events. This summer Sam got married to Daniela from Philadelphia, and although he has now relocated to the USA, his volunteering journey is continuing. Sam helped man The Together Plan’s stand in the exhibitors’ hall at the IAJGS conference this month and he has offered to volunteer for Jewish Tapestry Project (The Together Plan’s sister charity in the USA) now that he is on the other side of ‘the Pond’!
In Sam’s own words:
I’ve been volunteering for The Together Plan for almost ten years now. I’ve been involved in almost every aspect of the charity – from fundraising and office administration to running summer camps in Belarus. What I appreciate most is the fact that this organisation has given me so many different ways to contribute. I am excited to continue volunteering, because I know that there will be plenty more opportunities to be part of this organisation. This is especially the case as I have just moved to the USA, where I know I can help open new doors and grow the charity
It would be remiss at this point not to mention the UK charity JVN (the Jewish Volunteering Network) – who play a vital role to other non-profits not only helping to source volunteers, but also advising, training, mentoring and offering support both to charity volunteer managers and the volunteers themselves. They have been and continue to be an integral part of what we do and they play an incredibly important role in the charity sector for which we are immensely grateful.
Sam Behrens (left) and Carl Kaplan (right) at The Together Plan’s exhibitor stand at the IAJGS 2024 Conference in Philadelphia
We are currently looking for volunteers to help with our humanitarian aid project, our HR department and helping with admin at our HQ in Bushey – more information on request. If you would like to volunteer for us, please complete our application form here