US-RFE Partnership program held a Sakhalin Roundtable on April 28 to promote partners projects in the region. Several of current and past partners presented their projects: “Breast Cancer Early Detection and Prevention”, “Encouragement and Support of Breast Feeding”, “Preventive Maintenance of HIV Infection among Youth on Sakhalin”, “Using the Internet for Economic Development and Citizen Involvement”, “Unveiling Future Opportunities for Students of the Russian Far East”, “Russian Health Fairs”, “Maternal and Infant Training & Community Education/Resource Center”, “Strengthening Wild Fish Advocacy on Sakhalin”. The event was supported by the Sakhalin Region Committee for International, Overseas Economic and Interregional Relations. Vladislav V.Rukavets, Chairman of the Committee greeted the participants of the Roundtable; he underlined the importance of Partnership activity for the development of the region and asked projects to address the Committee with their problems and concerns. Mr. Rukavets assured Partnership of Committee’s support and co-operation. The collaboration between the Committee and Partnership indicates a new quality level of business relations when a state authority becomes a partner of developing Partnership projects in the region. The representatives of the projects also underlined this new aspect in their cooperation with local authorities, when city administrations tried to support and participate in the projects’ activity in the regions as they see the general aim of their mutual activity to support the society development. Discussing the results of the first quarter activity the leaders of the projects discovered another new tendency in their development. Partnership projects started interacting between themselves working on mutual events, training, seminars etc. Sakhalin medical institutes implementing Partnership projects jointly develop various events which are not under the Partnership activity but aimed to the same strategic goals as the Partnership Program has like social and economic infrastructure development. The roundtable showed the timely activity of the Sakhalin projects in accordance with their working plans. All partners demonstrated their information hand outs, published materials and electronic versions of their training and seminars
 

On April 22, there was a meeting of US-RFE Partnership Program managers with USAID/Russia officers. It was conducted at the request of Hugh A. Winn, Director, Office of Regional Development and Jess M. Bratton, Regional Coordination Advisor. The main questions discussed at the meeting were democracy development in the society and the activity of Partnership and its collaboration with other USAID-funded activities. It was underlined that the U.S. RFE Partnership Activity and various RFE technical assistance programs joined forces to foster community development projects in the Russian Far East. They leveraged their resources to bring together local officials, private business representatives and community leaders to solve local problems and develop society. Both sides of the meeting agreed that interaction between USAID-funded activities supports developing democratic society. In mid-May in Khabarovsk, ISC plans to conduct a Net meeting of resource centers. Hugh A. Winn believes that participation of Partnership representatives in this event is of great use and USAID Office of Regional Development is ready to provide Partnership with funding to attend this meeting. The discussion on the activity of Technical Assistance Programs included the issue of unpredictable obstacles such as new laws and reforms and their influence on USAID-funded activities in Russia.

In honor of the Earth Day celebrated internationally on April 22nd, more than 200 children aged 10-14 from Khabarovsk Krai participated in environmental grass-roots activism event organized by the FOREST Project in partnership with the Khabarovsk Krai Forestry Service. The event took place in Bolshekhekhtsyrsky Zapovednik - a protected territory with over 400,000 hectares of forested land – where the children planted new trees and took part in ecological quiz. An NGO All Russia Society for the Protection of Nature as well as college-aged students from the Ecological Faculty of the Khabarovsk Pedagogical University also took part in this event that contributed to educating children to protect the nature. Such events organized with USAID assistance and direct involvement of the FOREST Project are raising the future citizens of Russia, teaching them to care about the environment. The event at Bolshekhekhtsyrsky Zapovednik represents a small part of an international grass-roots movement focused on environment protection as well as stronger civil society and citizen participation at all ages

The exhibition "Education, Personnel, Career." held in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from April 19-21 was a success for both employers and employees, who had an opportunity to find each other through the "Job Fair". The companies who presented themselves at the fair were either from the oil and gas industry, such as Sakhalin Energy, BETS BV, Petrosakh, or recruiting agencies, including the Sakhalin Employment Department. The Sakhalin Employment Department believes that the event is a good idea. A special job fair "Chance For Youth", held for the second time, helps people with good education - but lacking work experience - to get employment. Several employers participated in a special conference devoted to employment issues. Vice President of Sakhalin-1 operator Exxon Neftegas Limited, Mark Hackney, spoke about employment opportunities with the company. The company soon plans to expand its staff by some 150-200 specialists, Hackney said. Sakhalin Governor Ivan Malakhov addressing the participants and visitors at the exhibition said: “The regional administration pays special attention to the training of specialists necessary for the development of the island’s economy. Our aim is to match the number of trained specialists and the number of vacancies.”

On April 18-20, 2005 ‘Effectiveness Increasing of Municipal Official Cooperation with Local Society’ training/seminar took place in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. 13 municipal formations of Sakhalin Region and representatives of Regional Administration participated in it. The training/seminar lasted for three days. The trainer G. Tsarkova revealed high professional level. Many different questions were discussed. All of them were very interesting to managers and specialists of economic and PR departments of local Administrations. The questions about cooperation with non-commercial organizations through municipal request, social grant projects competitions, social meetings, strategic planning as a form citizens attraction to governing a town, local forum were discussed from all points of view. The great attention was paid to the problems of cooperation with business society about the following issues: local society foundation working as a form of cooperation of three sectors of local society, holding a selling campaign of social projects and services, having a common project activity for local society developing, budget opened listening, cooperation with entrepreneur associations, system of communication establishment, administrative barriers overcoming. The issues of cooperation peculiarities with different groups of local society and conflicts overcoming methods were revealed. All the participants were interfered to the process of problem discussion very actively and they were really interested in finding ways of solving them. The participants made a decision to use the technology, which the trainer had showed them (Open Space, “Gold” Viennese Rule, etc). These technologies will help to understand local problems and to find the methods to overcome them.

Fourth Annual Russian Far East Regional Parliamentary Debate Tournament, sponsored by American Councils for International Education through alumni activity funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State, was held this year at Khabarovsk State Pedagogical University. Ten debate teams, twenty participants – all alumni of FLEX and Eurasia Undergraduate programs from the RFE who were selected through a competitive process – demonstrated their political acumen and honed their English skills and persuasive abilities.

            On Friday, April 1^st, Todd Myers, a Portland State University (PSU) business lecturer, gave a presentation in front of a crowd of 50 university students and faculty members of local institutions concerning his impressions of Russia.  Myers, who has taught business seminars for PSU in the Russian Far East (RFE) over the past six years, gave a unique history of how his interest in Russia developed from an early age and has continued through to his recent experiences in Russia.  In addition to his teaching in the RFE, Myers also established partnerships with his university and Sakhalin State Universiy and Khabarovsk State Technical University, participated in RFE forums concerning regional development, and has worked on U.S. government funded grants to promote the development and international marketing of Amur soybeans, tourism in the RFE, and oceanic harvesting in Sakhalin Oblast.