The Citizen Foundation - 

National Support institute for Community Development

 in Russia

International Conference:  “10 Years of Community Development in Russia, the USA, Europe and NIS: Criteria and Indicators”

This conference is going to be a final part of another 5 years long project “Community Development in Moscow Region” granted by the Ch.S.Mott Foundation back in 1998. Going deeper into community development and observing new trends in reality, where the Federal housing and self management reforms in Russia were gaining speed from year to year, we decided to turn it into International especially after the Civil Forum in Kremlin in November 2001. The CF accomplished its partnership project with KFTRA – Kerklees Federation of Tenants and Residents Assosiation in Great Britain, met with Hungarian and Litvinian colleagues in Budapest, with German, Italian and Sweden community developers in Zaltsburg. Everywhere we met colleagues, who showed their interest to world wide tendencies and indicators in community development versus globalization trend in world economy and world order. 

Robert Putnam in his book “Bowling Alone” wrote: “American history carefully examined is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement, not just down – a story of collapse and of renewal”. And below: “Exhaustive descriptions of social networks in America – even at the single point of time – do not exist. I have found no reliable, comprehensive, nationwide measures of social capital…” Our British colleague Gabriel Chanan considers that one of the big issues for us here at the moment is how to identify some national indicators for community development and connected areas - we still have no such indicators after all this time. He is working with a group of local authorities and national agencies to try to produce these indicators. Professor John Kretzmann and John Mcknight in the North-West University of Chicago published very promising concept of building community from inside through mobilizing a community assets, which is of interest to all practitionaries. We here in Russia working on crossbreeding of Russian and European and American traditions of community development, see some perspectives in building a local civic infrastructure as an essential part of any local community.

The goal of this conference at the moment is to bring American, West European, East European and Russian scholars and community developers together for cross culture discussions on measurements of community development in our part of the world, for establishing common ground on benchmarks. The conference suppose to cover three aspects: 

· The recent historical background of community development and some reference points concerning benchmarks and indicators;
· Development of framework covering both community development and the adjacent ares of community involvement and service delivery;
· A proposed set of measures for benchmarks across such a framework..

The conference will cover the essential functions of community development and involvement in five main areas:

1. Empowerment of disadvantaged people through the development of autonomous groups and organizations;

2. “Vertical” community development (ie involvement in public decision-making);

3. “Horizontal” community involvement (ie Involvement in community and voluntary activity, mobilizing a community assets);

4. Appropriate service provision and enhancement;

5. Regeneration, sustainable development and social economy. 

Lack of national indicators in community development is not historically surprising in Russia. Even in the West it has been mainly carried out in scattering of small scale and short-term projects. The potential impact of the conference would be at least in its mission accomplished to attract a public attention to these issues, and to be seen in spreading out the idea that the local community and voluntary sector could be measured and assessed in an objective way. The most important is the fact that the conference was initiated by Russians and held in Russia were these issues were absolutely unknown 10 years ago. International large-scale of the conference will gain more weight and respect to the discussed problems in this country.

There would be more then 50 participants from different regions of Russia, Eastern European countries, NIS, Western Europe and the USA. To make this conference really meaningful and worthwhile to come, we want to collect outlines of all speaker’s reports preliminary, translate into English-Russian and e-mail them to all participants for better understanding each other. 

After plenary session which is going to be held in one of the luxury hotels in Moscow with many VIP the participants will work in small groups:

1. Indicators of community development - comparative study of American, European, Russian approaches. What is the profit of "non profits"?

2. Quantification and verification of these indicators from the investor's point of view. How to measure the "profit" - real product and impact of CD programs and projects? 

3. Support institutes in community development (experience, Declaration of solidarity, setting up the International Association).

All reports will be taped, sent to the speakers afterwards to be edited and published by the Citizen Foundation as a separate book in Russian and English for wide dissemination. 

The conference target at the moment mostly are support institutes, coalitions, universities, individual researchers, not community leaders and grassroots organizations. We want to see experts, writers and educators.

Our strategic plan in Russia is to turn federal, regional and local social programs money into community development projects. And to convince business to support community development movement all over Russia. Otherwise community development process in Russia will fade soon after Western grants would gone. It is quite clear if you have a look at the Citizen Foundation perspective: being supported by American and European foundations, CF earned a reputation and respect as a support institute, generated new ideas and published many books. But after almost 10 years of support from abroad there is no hope to continue its activity relaying upon Russian investments. Our goal is to attract government, mass media and business attention to the significance and perspective of community development as the source of democratic values, background for decentralization of former Soviet empire and bastion against globalization tendencies in the world.

In the frame of this conference we are planning to produce a massage: issue a public statement, sort of Declaration of Community Spirit - international

document, which could accumulate the main contemporary democratic and grassroots ideas in one encouraging document addressing political leaders, governments and businesses all over the world. It might be fun, harmless, but if clever written - very penetrating and powerful.

We would try to set up during these sessions Russian or even International Community Development Association - a network of all those support organizations who are involved in community development practice and theory.

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 The Citizen Foundation - National Support institute for Community Development

 in Russia

          The CF has been around for 8 years, started community development projects in Russia when there did not exist any relevant translation of such terms as neighborhood community, social services, local economy, public advocacy, direct democracy, coalition building, community development corporations, etc. Mass media journalists didn't understand any of these themes, not any politician or municipal authority was familiar with them and community development practice back in 1992 also.

           Thanks to US AID Community Development Partnership project (1994-1997) with 7 American community development institutions the CF managed to build a good team of 7 professional trainers and adopted 50 modules on 5 tracks - community organizing, coalition building, social services, local economy, public advocacy. It took 2 years before the team started training and consulting activity. The Ford Foundation supported training school STEPS which has been registered as a CF department in 1997 during 3 years. The CF got from Moscow government a good facilities for training for very low rent in the center of Moscow where more then 2,500 community activists from Moscow and Moscow region has been trained already. They became leaders and organizers in their communities - thus the first generation of grassroots direct democracy citizen groups was born in Russia.

         Next step of the CF strategy was to disseminate its model of independent non profit training centers in different regions of Russia. We started from Novgorod the Great where in 1997 the CF supported by US AID piloted its technology of trainer's team building. Successfully built team got our set of curricula and training modules for community development.
         The CF was one of the first NGO in Russia who got the Ch.S.Mott Foundation grant in 1997 for setting up 7 more supporting centers for community organizations in Moscow region cities. Actually this project was more complicated: in cooperation with local administrations in these cities we started building the local citizen society infrastructure, which meant not only the network of neighborhood groups, but their coalitions, local support institutes, community corporations and community foundations to support local business. The final goal was to start the first partnership projects between neighborhoods groups and local agencies.

         In 2001-2003 we continue this project with the Mott foundation support: this time we distribute small grants - $500-1000 for 10 projects in each of these 6 pilot cities in Moscow region. We published the RFP in local mass media and started the competition between groups - setting up local jury, the procedure for choosing the best and the whole tradition for future. Administrations and businesses in all of these cities participate in these projects with their match money, sometimes 10 times larger then ours...

         Meanwhile we continue to build training centers and schools: 4 - in Ukrainian dying coal miners settlements in Donbas and recently - 3 more in Tumen, Perm, Saratov under contract with Eurasia Foundation. In Ukraine we work in partnership with Regional Development Agency "Donbass" for 3 years already. The CF community development approach was excepted by Kazachstan government, where in Alma Ata in 1999 we delivered 7 days T4T for national team of trainers and developed with them two new community organizing modules. The CF trainers continued to spread out this concept in Central Asia in 2001 also.

        The concept of neighborhood communities, grassroots democracy and local civil society is rather new for Russian mentality in spite of new Federal Self-government law and Housing reform which are implementing since 1996. Not many politicians understand that these reforms can't be successful without local civic virtue - organized neighbors, social networks, mutual support, cooperation, trusts, partnerships, etc. We understand that our continued efforts are of great importantance in this field so far. Social capital of local groups and neighborhood communities reducing poverty and social exclusion, ensuring equal opportunities for all, building strong local economy and wealthy communities with a good quality of life and strong identities is the 'CF concept of developing democracy in Russia.

         The world experience in community development witnesses that the key figure in this continuous process is professional community organizer well known everywhere in Western world except Russia. There is not any faculty in Russian universities and colleges where this profession is teaching. The CF has absorbed community development ideas, direct democracy practice, American and European experience one of the first in Russia, and considers its mission as continuation its educational activity by using modern information and communication technology.

         That's why the CF strategy for next decade is to continue grassroots democracy education especially oriented toward this new "community organizer" profession. We have developed the entire course "Community organizing" for professionals using mass media - like distant education by Internet, like publishing national monthly newspaper "Grassroots", like anchoring national TV talk show "Talking about communities", etc. All of these projects are seeking for funding. We don't believe that Russian government is apt to finance these strategic projects so far.

          Meanwhile the CF recently accomplished the partnership project with British Federation of Tenants and Residents Association (KFTRA) sponsored .)/ British Department of International Development. The product of this partnership is the serial of 5 books:

• - Igor Kokarev, Neighborhood Communities - the Path of Russia in Future. Russian/European comparative study, 2001;
  - Felix Karasev, Social Capital of Neighborhood Communities, 2001;
  - The Catalog of CF training courses (revised edition), 2001;
  - Local Self government: from Enthusiasm to Profession, ed. by KirillZendrikov,2001;
  - Elena Shomina, Tenants Movement in Great Britain, 2001.

           Another endeavor to spread out direct democracy patterns in Russia is cross-cultural study of American communities which was undertaken last year by the CF president Igor Kokarev who got small travel grant from the Ford foundation and made a long distance travel during 6 months by car from New York to Los Angeles and back visiting 28 cities and townships in the middle of the USA. He spent $15000 of his own, wrote 300 pages of interviews and stories about community life in many states and made 12 hours of videotapes. He is also seeking funds to complete his research and publish a book "Grassroots Democracy in the USA from Russian Perspective".

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