May 2007
Friends House Moscow (FHM) is in
the midst of a busy year! Our landlord
has told us that he will sell our apartment in June. Consequently, as I write, we are looking for a new home for Friends
House Moscow. We will most likely rent
an office space as close to the center of Moscow as possible. The size of our
new office and its location will impact our programs. Consequently, we are in some uncertainty at this time. A positive side of this uncertainty is that
we have created a process to discern what FHM should be doing in five, ten, and
twenty years, and includes a Development Working Group that will meet with
Russian Quakers throughout Russia to begin this dialogue.
This spring, one of our two
full-time staff left after three-and-a-half years of outstanding service. We are now considering hiring a new employee
and adjusting our staffs’ workloads. In
addition, we currently have the benefit of a summer intern. This has given us the opportunity to
understand how we might best use volunteer services.
As you can imagine, the Personnel
Committee, which I clerk, has been busy. We have recently written job
descriptions and applications forms for staff and interns. We have also developed a new evaluation
system for our employees based on queries, which the staff answer and which the
Personnel Committee discusses with them.
I am enjoying my work with Personnel and the intellectual and spiritual
challenge of being a good Quaker employer.
FHM
continues our efforts to become a legal entity in Russia. Progress at becoming legal is not easy in
Russia. There are considerable barriers
for non-Russian Orthodox religious groups to gain legitimacy. For example, to gain such status, we must
register with the Russian government each year for 15 years. We have now been registered for ten
years. Gaining recognition as a
religious organization in Russia is a high priority for us.
FHM now
consists of three legal entities: the Russian social organization, “Dom
Druzei,” meaning House of Friends, the American non-profit organization,
“Friends House Moscow Support Association,” and a British charity, “Friends
House Moscow.” A board of 16 members
from five different countries meets once a year, with two additional Executive
Committee meetings in between board meetings to decide on issues of immediate
importance. I am in my fourth of six
years as a board member.
When I
attended the Executive Committee Meeting of the board in March, we spent an
evening hearing reports from the non-government organizations (NGOs), to whom
we contribute funding. Meeting the NGOs
we support and hearing the reports of their projects was an inspirational
experience. This event also celebrated
the eleventh anniversary of the founding of FHM.
Our NGO
Alternatives to Violence Projects are thriving. Currently, we are having workshops in Moscow, Lipetsk, and
Dzerzhinsk. In Odessa, AVP includes
work in a prison. Workshops have also
been held in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and in the three Baltic states. With FHM financial support, AVP manuals and
booklets have been translated into Russian.
Our FHM staff has taken active roles in these AVP projects. Our workshops have reached a wide variety of
Russians: young people, refugees, psychologists, social workers, and conscripts
in the military. Problems with
intolerance and xenophobia continue in Russia, and FHM funded a project in the
Pskov region run by human rights activists who visited rural schools and
libraries to address these issues.
Our
projects with children have increased recently. At the All-Saints Center, we
support art classes for children with disabilities and children from
disadvantaged families. In the
Dzerzhinsk area, art therapists are working in small groups with children at
risk. The “Captains of Destiny” project
allows psychologists to visit and work with children in a Moscow
orphanage. A project run by the Center
for Judicial and Legal Reform in Moscow trains student mediators in secondary
schools. “Save a Child” is a new
initiative which will provide website information with details about how to
make donations that can help children suffering from chronic medical
conditions. We continue to work with
Raduga, a program for disabled children, “Big Change,” a program for adult
orphans, and KRUG, a program to enrich the lives of orphans through theatre
classes and music lessons.
Our outreach efforts in Russian
have been highly successful—especially through our website, which is averaging
over 4,500 hits a month with close to 1,000 unique visitors. These are people who are interested in
Quakerism, and, through our website, have access to literature about Quakerism
that we have translated into Russian.
Currently, Quaker Faith and Practice is being translated. Our staff member, Sergei Grushko, who is
also a member of the meeting in Moscow, manages the website and responds to
inquires. Our staff has also supported
worship groups in Tbilisi and in Barnaul.
We encourage donations for FHM to
be sent to Friends House Moscow Support Association (USA), c/o Julie Harlow,
1163 Auburn Drive, Davis CA 95616. To
sign up for HFM/s Quarterly reports, please send an email with the subject
“Quarterly Reports—subscribe” to fhm@online.ru. Langley Hill Friends Meeting has a travel
fund to support my ministry. Donations
may be sent to Dave Boynton, Treasurer (9408 Fairview Ave., Manassas, VA
20110-5802) with a notation that your check is for the Friends House Moscow
Fund. I send all donors an annual
report.
As my readers can imagine, my work
with FHM is spiritually enriching. This
has a lot to do with the good works that we are funding and the experience of
seeing Quaker faith and practice take root in Russia. Our hope for the future of Quakerism in Russia is that the
Friends House Moscow Board will become entirely Russian. With several Russians now active on the
Board, we are making progress. This is an exciting time in Russian, Quaker
history!
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