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Training Seminar in Volgograd The training seminar in Volgograd took place on
March 25 and 26, 2003. The experience in Astrakhan had shown that when the
local administration participated in the organization of a training, the
problem of whether the leaders of the ethnic associations participated was
solved by itself.пїЅ Nataliya
Konischeva, administrator of the Center for Interethnic Cooperation, found references on Aleksej Suslov пїЅ assistant chief of the Committee for
ethnic affairs and affairs of the Cossacks пїЅ on the Internet. Without
difficulties we found his work phone number a little later. Aleksej Suslov
immediately began searching for a country boarding house where the training
could be held. The boarding house, пїЅAkhtuba,пїЅ situated on the bank of the
Homonymous river, was recommended to him. Then the employees of the Committee
made a list of the leaders of interethnic associations who would participate
in the seminar. As in Astrakhan, the administration preferred to
carry out the seminar during weekdays. The experience of the training in
Astrakhan had proven that the more administrative representatives
participated in a training, the more disciplined it was carried out. For this
reason we invited five representatives of the regional and city
administration. As in Ekaterinburg, the preliminary list of training
participants was impressive. To our surprise, almost all came to the
training. Together with us, that is Ashot Airapetyan, director of the Center,
Irina Kropotkina, financial director of the training, Viktoria Shykhat, a
young but much demanded trainer, and Galina Ustinov, representative of the
MacArthur Foundation, the number of participants totaled 25. As happened in
all the 7 regions we worked in before, representatives of German and Jewish
organizations took (a rather active) part in the training. Yet here, from five
Armenian organizations, nobody was present. The bus with the training participants left from the
city administration building at 6.10 p.m. and we arrived at the country boarding
house at 8 p.m. The boarding house consisted of separate, comfortable
campers. We did not agree beforehand who should be staying in which camper.
Each camper had a different number of rooms in it, and the rooms had varying
amounts of beds in them. It took twenty minutes, if not more, until everybody
had their place, but the following days showed, that everybody was satisfied
with the residence. Our conference room was in the House of the Fishermen.
The modern design and the good illumination made the conference room rather
cozy. From then on everything went smoothly. As in all other regions we
worked in before, no one in the Volgograd Region had ever organized a seminar
for the leaders of interethnic associations and gathered them together in a
country house before. As a result of this, we began the training seminar already
having positive attitudes towards us, as visitors from the
capital who created this positive precedent in Volgograd. The seminar began with VictoriaпїЅs traditional
question: пїЅPlease name the most urgent problems that ethnic associations face in
the Volgograd Region.пїЅ Ashot Airapetyan asked the participants to regard this
as crucial since it wasnпїЅt simply a question but a valuable opportunity to
interrogate the people who were the experts on this in the given area. The number of problems recorded totaled 54.
Kholmad Komilov, leader of the local Tajik organization, was extremely
disturbed about a new law concerning foreign citizens, due to which the
registration of Tajiks coming to Volgograd for seasonal work, had become an
insoluble problem. Sultan, a young Dagestan, noted the absence
of spirituality in people; a spirituality which could be trained with the
help of religious education. Sadly, the issue of human rights violations
was not pointed out by any participant. Well, it happens that Russia is not a lawful
state because the authorities, both local and federal, donпїЅt try to
maintain their citizensпїЅ rights (and even more so, non-citizensпїЅ rights). The participants of the seminar
chose four problems, which in their opinion were the ones that should be most
urgently dealt with in the Volgograd Region. The problems, that were considered most
important, are the following: 1.
The lack of policies and strategies regarding nationalities. 2.
Little
activity of the ethnic non-commercial Organizations 3.
The
absence of a center to unite different nationalities. 4.
The lack of spiritual (religious) education After identifying the main regional problems Galina
Ustinov spoke in front of the participants. For the leaders of ethnic
associations, who had heard about grants but never received them, her speech
was especially interesting. Galina Vladimirovna not only talked about the Mac
Arthur Foundation but also about different foundations that exist, how they
work, and where it is possible to find useful information about them, etc. It is necessary to emphasize that, in spite of the
fact that some of the leaders sat together until late, all participants were
equally present the next morning at 10 a.m. A tremendous liveliness stirred up among the
participants when they were asked to analyze examples of successful and
unsuccessful negotiations. Evgenij Khrupnov, assistant director of the Historic
and Ethnographic Museum, пїЅStaraya Starepta,пїЅ noted the reception of a written
approval from the governor regarding the distribution of two buses to his
organization as an example for a successful negotiation. As a negative
example, he stated that two years had passed and he had not yet received
the buses. This was
not the only example of that kind. It seemed to us that the leaders of ethnic
associations, as opposed their colleagues in business structures, were pleased with the process of
the negotiations but not with the results. As we did in Astrakhan, we decided to end the
training seminar with an interactive game, the aim of the game being for
everyone to take on another participantпїЅs position. We asked the
administration representatives to take on the role of ethnic community
leaders, and the latter to take on the role of administration
representatives. The subject we chose for the fictional negotiations was the
creation of a center to coordinate the policies on
nationalities in the Volgograd Region. The game was great entertainment. Boris Gekht,
leader of a German organization, superbly acted out the role of the Governor
of the Volgograd Region, and he did not refuse anybody anything.
The trainerпїЅs work was valued on
a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest: -пїЅпїЅ professionalism пїЅ 9,95 -
new
information пїЅ 8,47 -
practicality
пїЅ 9,14 -
application пїЅ 8,9 The question, whether
the training was useful for the participantпїЅs further work, was answered with
a medium of 9,42. In response to the question as to whether
it would be useful to coordinate the efforts of the different ethnic
associations throughout Russia, 18 participants answered with yes and 3
refrained from answering. Altogether the
training seminar in Volgograd was carried out successfully. |
