Center for Citizen Initiatives
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[edit] Origins
The Center for Citizen Initiatives (or CCI) is the brainchild of Sharon Tennison, who founded the nonprofit organization under a different name (the Center for U.S.-U.S.S.R. Initiatives) in 1983.
CCI's original mission was to foster cultural exchanges between citizens of the United States and the former Soviet Union. In 1989, CCI began to implement programs designed to provide economic assistance and business training to Soviet citizens.
These efforts continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and were eventually encapsulated in CCI's spearhead program, the "Productivity Enhancement Program" (or PEP). Under PEP, delegations of Russian entrepreneurs pay to visit U.S. communities (see Funding "Reinvention" section below), where they live with American families and attend training seminars offered pro bono by local businesses. Ms. Tennison refers to her company as "perhaps the most important 'open door'" between Russia and America today."[1]
[edit] People
San Francisco Office PEP Staff
[edit] Reinvention & Harsh New Realities
[edit] Funding Drops, Fees Rise
Since the end of subsidization ("due to [federal] budgetary constraints"[2]), PEP fees have more than doubled and the target entrepreneur clientele has shifted from small-sized businesses to larger and already-successful companies. This change in pricing and marketing has been accompanied by a revision to the organization's philosophy: namely, that the engine of economic growth now rests with larger-sized businesses, rather than smaller companies.
Sharon Tennison has demonstrated CCI's commitment to small business with statements like these:
Regional and municipal administrative reform is critical for broad growth of small business and a middle class across Russia [emphasis added]. Development of both is the greatest insurance that real democratic forms will take root and succeed.[3]
In May of 2006, Ms. Tennison noted CCI's evolving focus in an open letter published on her website:
In the last half of 2005, more medium-sized company directors [emphasis added] started applying for PEP training. It became increasingly clear that our PEP clientele was getting far more sophisticated and that our PEP program had to undergo radical changes in its training curriculum to continue to serve our market successfully.[4]
In this vein, Ms. Tennison has promoted middle-sized business in Russia, as evidenced in a contribution to the Johnson's Russia List (JRL) in late 2005, in which she identifies "Russia's mid-sized business sector as the one to jumpstart and bet on."[5]
[edit] Numbers Breakdown: Fees and Budget
In raw numbers, post-grant delegate fees are rising from somewhere in the area of 1-2 thousand dollars to 4½-to-7 thousand dollars. In her 'President's Report' in November of 2005, Sharon Tennison stated:
Our PEP transition to "full sustainability," where Russian entrepreneurs pay the full cost of their training, is hitting the halfway mark. In January, PEP delegates will pay $3,500 each to participate. This price will continue until end of 2006, at which time the cost will rise to $4,500.[6]
According to USAID, CCI's operating expenses in 2004 were $3,324,628.[7] Revenue and support totaled $3,664,599 (a surplus of $339,971). Of CCI's income, roughly 75% ($2,774,896) came from the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Based on these 2004 figures, the end of subsidization has eliminated ¾ of the organization's funding. Thus, CCI's full sustainability campaign amounts to an increase in delegate fees and private support revenue by roughly 2.7 million dollars annually (i.e., quadrupling their income).
[edit] Effort to Reach Out
In late 2005, CCI launched a redesigned version of its Travel Program [8], the "Russia Connection" program, which offers Americans guided tours of Russia. Many of the participants are former PEP home-hosts, visiting the Russians they previously invited into their homes. The program, however, is not limited to PEP participants. ("Open to any American traveler who is curious ...".) This could be interpreted as an effort to broaden the appeal of CCI (functioning as a travel guide rather than development agency) and possibly increase the profitability of the business. It could just as easily be a new strategy of exposing Americans to CCI and the prospect of volunteering in its PEP apparatus.
Update The Travel Program has been canceled by CCI, effective September 2006. [Learned via email in an attempt to participate.]
[edit] CCI Leadership's Politics
[edit] Loosely Speaking
President Sharon Tennison is a political pragmatist, favoring the rapprochement of U.S.-Russia relations at the expense of debate on divisive topics including human rights and political freedom issues. (Sharon Tennison defends the Putin Administration.) Essentially, Ms. Tennison's camp assumes that only Russia itself can develop its institutions and Western nations are best served by the pursuit of economic and international security (independent of humanitarian goals).
Bundled with this philosophy is a deep skepticism of the Western media's coverage of Russia-related news (a "preponderance of negative, sensational media attention on Russia", "journalists are completely in the dark about what's happening at Russia's grassroots").
This position rests on a notion of Russian democratic peculiarity and, flowing from this idea, the unfairness of the West's expectation that it will materialize as its own did. Though hesitant to draw comparisons, this school often promotes the idea that contemporary Russia is analogous to the robber baron period of American capitalism.
[edit] Real World Manifestations
Board of Directors member Patricia Dowden signed on to an open letter addressed to Presidents Putin and Bush in early 2005 that recalled together 9/11 and the Beslan school hostage crisis in a rallying call at "a time when ideological or religious fanaticism is once again attacking free societies, now using means of mass terror and destruction."[9] The letter notably requests: "Joint efforts to ensure that the Middle East, Central and Middle Asia, and North Caucuses do not turn into reservoirs of Islamic radicalism." The letter, posted in JRL, is one example of the CCI camp's mission to promote common cause between Russia and the United States (this time on the issue of the War Against Terror) at the expense of open debate on potentially "dividing" issues (most present in the text of this document: the Chechen War and the Iraq War).
A reaffirmation of this position exists on CCI's online news section, where an article by Nicolai Petro (University of Rhode Island Political Science Professor) appears, entitled "Russia Turns the Corner in Chechnya," celebrating the 2005 parliamentary elections in Chechnya (widely criticized by independent observers[10]).
Another variable influencing the policies of foreign NGOs in Russia today is the danger of being banned for threatening to manipulate the Russian political system.[11] When the Russian government began tinkering with its foreign NGO regulations in early 2006, Sharon Tennison went on record in support of the measures, opposing the objections of Human Rights Watch and others:
“I'm head of a NGO in Russia and I'm happy to reregister in order to get some decent laws governing Russia's NGO sector. I have nothing to be concerned about since our work helps Russian citizens - we don't do direct ‘political activity’. Nor do I think that out-of-country NGOs should do political activity when there is a freely elected president and government that still enjoys the goodwill and support of the majority of the country [emphasis added].”[12]
