Crowdfunding in Belarus experienced a spectacular surge in 2015, with the trend continuing in 2016. Leading Belarusian crowdfunding platforms Talakosht, MaeSens, and Ulej became increasingly effective in supporting cultural and social projects, charities, and socially responsible businesses. One of...
On 26 April 1986, an explosion at Charnobyl Nuclear Power Plant released huge amounts of radiation into the atmosphere contaminating large territories of Europe. Belarus ended up the most badly affected taking 70% of the fallout from the power...
April 26 this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, when tests at the power plant there went calamitously wrong. Then in the Soviet Union and now in Ukraine, the consequences for Belarus have been disastrous. The...
If you happened to be in Minsk on 4 April, you should have picked up your free ticket to the public reading of the play “Seven”. The acclaimed documentary play tells the true stories of seven brave women from around...
On 25 March 2016, president Lukashenka confirmed his support for the gradual 3 year increase of the retirement age, currently at 55 years for women and 60 years for men. The government had been discussing the pension reform in the...
A guest post from Masha Cheriakova, a social entrepreneur and writer of Heta Belarus dzietka. She has made a major life decision a little more than 3 years ago to develop social entrepreneurship in Belarus. This led her to...
In 2015, real wages declined everywhere in Belarus save Minsk, according to recently-published data from the Belarusian Statistical Committee. This easily explains why so many Belarusians are moving from the regions to the capital. The role of Minsk in the...
In 1905 his grandmother Ida left the village of Novy Svierzhan, about 60 km (46 miles) to the southwest of Minsk. At the age of 13 she set out to travel with her family to the United States of...
Judaism in Belarus dates back to the 9th century. The Jewish community has made hugely significant contributions to every stratum of life in these lands. But by the end of World War II (the Soviet Union’s ‘Great Patriotic War’),...
If you live outside the realm of the former Soviet Union, chances are you never celebrate 8 March, International Women's Day. However, for Belarusian men this holiday brings an eternal conundrum of how to celebrate the women in their lives...
On 13 February, Belarus’s main state television channel aired a 25-minute broadcast praising the Greek Catholic Church. The positive coverage signifies a change in how the Belarusian authorities treat this marginalised institution, which was previously viewed with...
In February 2016 Belarusian national air carrier Belavia announced that the first female pilot had joined its ranks since the company’s creation in 1996. Her name is Svetlana Yeryomenko, and she comes to Belarus from crisis-hit Russia, with strong...
On 28 January the Polish Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers proposed granting residence permits to a million migrants currently in Poland. The majority of them are Ukrainians, followed by Belarusians and Vietnamese. In recent years Poland has been aiming its...
In January 2016 Kiril Rudy, an Economic Advisor to President Alexander Lukashenka, said that the Belarusian economy was in need of more gender equality. Namely, structural gender inequalities and cultural stereotypes disproportionately affect the female labour force and...
