obviously it has been a while since i have updated this blog. over the past months, i have unfortunately started numerous entries, and just never found the time to complete them with all of the information that i have wanted to pass on to all of you. the past couple months in particular have seen an amazing amount of action in between helping out with the group 36 training group, preparing for my family’s visit, lauren’s mom’s visit, our trip to turkey, language refresher camp, a last minute dash up to kyiv to see vice president biden, and of course, my primary work here in sovietskyi. needless to say, there’s a lot to catch you up on, and i plan on doing that over the next few weeks. to begin with though, here’s the latest from the work side of things, and the next entry will focus on the fun stuff…
on the work front, things have been going very well lately. as peace corps staff said in training, everything seems to pick up right around the year mark. they were definitely right! over the past few weeks, it’s been a whirlwind around here, starting with writing the first grant for Perspektiva. after a lot of ground work and discussion about the right project to fit numerous requirements, we finally decided that it was time to partner up with the hospital to help them address the issue of tuberculosis in Sovietskyi Rayon. along with buying equipment to assist them with the implementation of the WHOs DOTS strategy, we are using the project as an example to other local community organizations of Perspektiva’s new capacity as a “Center for Regional Development” and the way in which we hope to work with local partners to implement social projects. this basically means that Perspektiva hopes to contribute their knowledge of project design, grant writing, and training experience to partnerships with such organizations as the central rayon library, museum, local schools, and other small local ngos who are already very knowledgeable about their own technical areas of work. Perspektiva’s idea is that their own contacts with national and international organizations, combined with the local partner’s technical knowledge of their areas of work , can make for a powerful combination when implementing social projects here in the region.
in addition to the project with the hospital that we submitted through peace corps, Perpektiva also helped send three members of the sovietskyi community to a training in Yalta last month held by the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI invited a dozen or so small ngo’s from all over crimea to take part in an ngo capacity-building training designed to educate them in the system of support available to them in the forms of national and international donors. after taking part in this 6 day training (held over two three-day weekends), the participants were then invited to prepare a small grant of up to $3,000 for funding by NDI.
Perspektiva helped send three participants from Sovietskyi Rayon including our youngest member Enver, Ruslan who represented the NGO “Center for Democracy” (also closely affiliated with Perspektiva as my counterpart, Elnur, is the Director), and Muzafar representing a community association from one of the small villages in the rayon. enver and ruslan were particularly interested in the training, and I have been working with them over the couple weeks to design their projects and complete the writing of their grants. both have fairly similar projects focusing on mobilizing small groups of people to work with their local elected official to solve a small problem in their community; however, the end goals are slightly different. enver is hoping to work with a group of parents from a small village of 1,000 people about 25 km from sovietskyi who have organized themselves and are working with their local official to build a new pre-school. currently, their efforts are only directed towards the actual building itself, and enver would like to help them build a playground around the new school that can be used by kids at the pre-school during the day, and then by other young children and parents as a safe place to play in the evenings. right now, as this is a very small village, children are generally playing in the streets, near the roads, or around old building sites. needless to say, not the greatest of places for safety or parental supervision.
ruslan’s project is in a similar vein, but he’s hoping to work with the children and parents in the Crimean Tatar neighborhood of sovietskyi (officially named “friendship”) to build a small athletic field, probably with soccer goals and a basketball hoop. as part of a government program a few years ago, many Crimean Tatars who have moved back to the region from Uzbekistan have moved into a specific area of town where land was set aside for them; there are currently about 1800 people in the neighborhood, including 100 kids up to 6 yrs old and 350 kids from 6 to 16 yrs old. ruslan’s idea is to organize a group of these children and their parents to work with the local officials to designate a small amount of land in the neighborhood for a small athletic field, design it together, and put together a fundraising plan to buy the necessary materials to build it.
i have to say that i really like this project, and not only because it’ll give the kids an opportunity to play more soccer (which is always a bonus for me, of course!) there is a small field in the apartment complex where i live now, and on any given evening, there are at least 15 kids of all ages out there playing together, usually with 3 or 4 mothers or young families sitting on the benches nearby to watch. it gives the whole area a nice community feel that is unfortunately lacking in the “friendship” neighborhood. this is the area that i lived in with my host family for my first month in town, and i spent more than a few hours last summer out on the soccer field with their young son and his friends. the main field that they play on right now in the center of the neighborhood is actually land from some old homesites that were started but never finished. a couple poles have been stuck in the ground at either end of the field for goals, and there are incomplete foundations and other building materials all around. not exactly the safest place to be playing what can become a pretty physical game.
anyway, both of these grants were finished and submitted this past Friday, and we were just invited to a press conference that NDI is having next wednesday, august 5, in Simferopol where they will announce the projects that they are going to fund for this year. so we’ll see what happens!
another grant that we were working on, and actually just managed to send off today, is a project from the east europe foundation that focuses on alternative energy and/or materials. sovietskyi rayon, especially out near the salt marsh and alongside the canals and rice fields, has a large supply of water reeds, that when processed correctly, supposedly makes a thatch with very good natural water-repellant and insulation qualities. a few people over the years have attempted to start up businesses in this area, but have never really been successful (from what i can gather, this is either because their business plans were not well put together in the first place, or they did not figure out the transportation problems associated with selling this in Europe). Perspektiva’s idea, partnering with a larger regional ngo in western Ukraine who has more experience with larger projects such as this, is to send a small group of people from several local villages to a training in Poland (someone already actually teaches a class on how to manufacture and use this stuff!), who can then become involved in the business when they return. at first, local demand would be provided by remodeling of the village clinics in the rayon, many of whom are in need of new roofs or insulation on the walls. after that, cooperatives and a business association could be organized a few years down the line, and they could start selling this stuff farther way, giving the villages a sustainable economic activity which many are badly in need of.
at first glance, it seems to me like a bit of a stretch for a project, but thinking more about it, the skills and capacity is already in place in various groups around the rayon. Perspektiva has the business planning skills and contacts around the rayon, there are lots of people with the agricultural experience to grow and harvest the stuff, and the manufacturing and construction capacity is also readily available. as long as there is some local demand in the short term to allow people here to get some experience with the whole process, whose to say that they couldn’t make a real go at it. several other countries already export the stuff, so it has some interesting possibilities. i don’t think we’ll know about the results of the grant for another month or two, so we’ll see what happens in the meantime.
in addition to these grants, the polish guys from NGO Terra Humana were in town last week to begin their strategic planning training. Perspektiva and Terra Humana wrote a project together a few months ago with the aim to assist three rayons in crimea with developing their strategic development plans for the next 15 years, and the project was funded by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. the guys from the polish ngo will be in crimea for at least two more weeks over the next month to train local government officials, businessmen, and community leaders in krasnoperekopske, nizhnigorskyi, and leninskyi rayons, with Perspektiva acting as a local coordinator and technical resource.
for anyone curious about any of this, i’ve updated the Perspektiva website with an english language document that summarizes their past experience, successful projects, and trainings.
i think that sums up the craziness of the business side for now. next update will be the fun stuff, so stay tuned!
