Please find attached our latest six-monthly report.  We ask you to share it with other F(f)riends who might be interested in its news.

 

Some of you have been included in this mailing because you were a participants in the Vienna Gathering earlier this year. If you do not wish to receive news from Dom Druzei Moscow, please let us know and we will remove you from the mailing list.

 

It would be useful for us to have some response to our news. Does this six monthly report meet your needs?  How do you use it? Are there other people to whom we should send it (the Clerk of your Meeting, for example)? Is it too short, or too long? Does it raise questions that need to be answered? Are we doing the things you want us to do here in Russia?

 

 The list of queries is endless and as we develop a website about Dom Druzei’s work, it would be valuable to know what Friends around the world are thinking about the role of a Friend’s House in Moscow as Russia’s role in the world changes. Is Russia becoming more isolated? Is the need for cross border travel between ordinary people greater now than it was during the Cold War? There are lots of questions around!

 

In this Report we have shared a little about our approach to project management. Should we talk about decision making too? How do we decide which projects to support? The decisions are hard, because there are so many good projects. Our problem is simply shortage of funds. It is painful to turn down projects that have been carefully prepared when the only reason is there just is not enough money coming in.

 

It is equally painful to turn down a worthy project that does not meet the criteria we have set. Some of the requests are for such small amounts. One example may illustrate our dilemma: 

“We intend to offer free of charge diagnoses of eye (ophthalmologic) illnesses among poor diabetics.  In our organisation there is an optician who is prepared to work free of charge. In order to carry out the examinations he needs an instrument for the diagnoses - an Ophthalmoscope. We would like to ask Friends House Moscow to purchase an Ophthalmoscope for us.”

 

Cost: $130 to benefit 200 diabetic patients.

 

Dom Druzei is not here to plug the enormous gaps left in the system by a developing capitalistic economy. There are other organisations and charities better placed to do such work. We try to pass requests we reject on to other groups. We observe that most western governments are closing, or have already closed, their support programmes in Russia.  We try to limit ourselves to traditional Quaker concerns and to the things that Friends do best. We say this with a due sense of humility, noting what others have done before here and elsewhere in the world.

 

In the 1920's and 30's Friends House Moscow (as it was known then) worked with local administrations. We have not made similar links with the current government and it is difficult to predict what the response would be if we tried to re-establish that pattern of working. The present administration is highly suspicious of the activities of Non-Governmental Organisations, particularly foreign ones, seeing them as trying to destabilise rather than support government work. Rebuilding trust will take time, faith and resources.

 

While we support QCEA’s explorations into future sources of institutional funding, at present we rely on you, dear Friends.

 

With best wishes,

 

Sergei Grushko, Natasha Zhuravenkova (Dom Druzei staff)

 

Go to first 2008 staff report                       Back to Welcome page