Dinah Zeltser, MA/MM '00
Letter from Abroad
I blame National Public Radio (NPR) for turning me into a vagabond in my post-graduate years. As I was finishing the Heller-Hornstein program, NPR was running a long series about Eastern Europe ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. My latent sense of nostalgia finally found its outlet, and the journey took me across the Atlantic and back to the land of my birth.
I was born and raised in a seaside town, notorious for its humor and cosmopolitanism, in the now former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Though marked at birth as an undesirable due to my ethnicity, my parents tried their best to offer me a sense of normalcy and belonging in the country of my birth. In the late 1980s they accepted the inevitable and chose to abandon all their earthly possessions and a degree of certainty for the promise of freedom. I will be forever indebted to them for their courage, which instilled in me the freedom and determination to take risks.
Freedom and determination
Almost a decade after I was stripped of my Soviet citizenship, on May 6, 1997, I proudly accepted the rights and responsibilities accorded to citizens of the United States of America. By accepting the privileges of American citizenship I took it upon myself to live in accordance with the best principles and ideals this country has to offer. Most of the personal and professional choices I have made since are a direct result of the overarching narrative of my personal circumstances – those of an immigrant who has been given the opportunity to make the best of her life with nothing but freedom and determination. I have chosen to live and work, both in the United States and abroad, with a personal mission of helping shape and develop healthy, productive, and open communities that reflect the values that first brought my family to the United States.While my family’s only hope for a better life was to come to the United States, I still hold the belief that, whenever possible, people should receive the necessary support to make a better life for themselves in their homeland.
I signed up for the Peace Corps after graduation, determined to go back to Eastern Europe. Given the choice between Haiti and Macedonia, I pronounced: “I am not going to any country with political instability; I am not going to Haiti.” I arrived in Macedonia in 2001 – a month after the start of the Albanian rebellion. Three months later we were evacuated.
Falling in love
In the meantime I had fallen in love with Macedonia. A year later I returned as a Fulbright Fellow. I was able to help people adjusting to a new social order make small but tangible differences in their communities. As a Fulbrighter looking at the relationship between international donors and local women- and child-focused organizations, I worked on some of the most salient issues facing Macedonia, such as interethnic relations, women’s equality, youth development and an issue that has become very dear to my heart – the rights of Roma, nomadic people in Central and Eastern Europe.I learned how international donors function and how political agendas get implemented in real life situations. Following the Fulbright experience, I became a consultant to a USAID Civil Society Program on ways to promote community development in impoverished Roma communities. One of my proudest memories is working with a remote community of Roma scavengers on ways to improve their income and living conditions. I became acquainted with the 252 people in that community in a way I’ve never gotten to know a community before.
Caring for the vulnerable
Again, I am far from the United States in my current position of community services officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees mission in the North Caucasus. I work with two distinct refugee groups: Ossetian refugees who fled in 1991-92 from Georgia and South Ossetia into North Ossetia; and internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled Chechnya during the 2000 conflict. Our work involves caring for vulnerable families, selecting beneficiaries for our various shelter projects, and implementing a small grants program targeting the integration of refugees and IDPs into their host communities. On any given day I may be designing training for those who work with elderly refugees, visiting a refugee settlement to interview a survivor of sexual or gender- based violence, or working with a school that wants to create an employment program for refugee teens.The Heller School gave me the theoretical background and tools I need to do my job well. I often call upon the skills I acquired in my strategic management and organizational behavior courses. Heller contributed to making me a professional by showing me how to engage with the issues I am passionate about in a way that brings about change.
Fairness, corruption, and human kindness
My work forces me to confront questions of fairness, corruption, human kindness, the aftermath of war, and the role of the UN in the world. I am blessed to work with dedicated individuals who come together out of commitment to make the world a better place for people who have lost everything. Our constant challenge is that what we can offer in return does not make up for the enormity of what has been lost. Regardless, I count success in baby steps and survive by reframing and by listening to NPR on the Web.