Barry Bogage with Mayor Benny Vaknin and map of the city of Ashkelon (above)
Barry Bogage visiting the recipient of a small business loan - bridal store and wedding dress maker (see above).
Barry Bogage , from MIDC, and the chair of the Economic development committee in our partnership, visited Ashkelon. We started the day visiting one of our small business loan recipients "Kala Levana" ( "White bride") . The owner and the spirit behind this beautiful dress and bridal gown shop is Luda , a 60 year old talented wedding dress and gown designer.
Luda is an immigrant form FSU , who lives in Ashkelon since she made Aliya to Israel , about 10 years ago with her husband and daughter . For years she was working at home and 2 years ago , with a loan she got from our project, she moved to a store downtown and had 2 women working with her.
She has just moved to a new , bigger store where she has a working area where 4 women are working with her. At her age, a bank would never approved a loan for her so the Partnership was her only chance to make her dream come true. During the war a lot of events were canceled , but right after it was over people wanted to celebrate again , and since you only get married once as Luda says , you want this to be a night to remember .
Looking at the beautiful collection of dresses she has we all felt that this is exactly what we had in mind when we created our fund.
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