Valeriya Burtyanskaya, 37, a neurologist from Kharkov, Ukraine, is studying at Pace University to become a physician assistant with the help of an Émigré Professional Retraining Program loan.
Assisting New Americans
The Hebrew Free Loan Society (HFLS) provides émigrés with a variety of loan programs to help them achieve self-sufficiency, including loans for basic needs and emergencies, professional retraining, higher education, and our newest program—starting or expanding a new business (microenterprise). Many émigrés were highly educated in their home country and high quality retraining provides their best route back into the middle class. Since HFLS began making these loans in 1999, it has helped émigrés from the Former Soviet Union by:
- Making 3,387 loans, totaling over $16 million, to help with basic needs like buying a used car to get work or paying for dental expenses;
- Making 845 loans, totaling $5.3 million, to help with the costs of college, graduate, and professional school;
- Making 419 loans, totaling $2.7 million, to help émigré professionals afford retraining in both academic and high-end vocational settings
Sergei emigrated from Arkhangelsk, a Russian city in the Arctic Circle, with his wife, Masha, and two teen-aged children in April, 1998. An anesthesiologist in Russia, Sergei earned a pittance in New York as a home attendant, as did Masha, also a physician in Russia. Sergei took out a $7,500 vocational loan in August, 1999, which paid for tuition on a year-long nuclear medicine technology course.
Today Sergei, now 47, is once again a professional — a nuclear medicine technician at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital — earning $75,000. He repaid his loan in full and became a donor in 2004.