CREATE AN ETHNIC PATH, OPEN A POTTERY AND REBUILD THE CHURCH
These were the ideas suggested by rural territorial self-governments and the Udora branch of the Komi Voytyr interregional public movement during the round table meeting held on 2 February 2018 in the business incubator of Usogorsk, Udora district. The round table meeting was entitled as Project Activity and Fund Raising for Local Initiatives.
The meeting was attended by representatives of territorial self-governments of Usogorsk, Koslan, Blagoyevo, Seliyb, Chim, and Razgort. Valentina Semyashkina, Deputy Director and Local Communities Project Manager of the Silver Taiga Foundation, and Olga Torlopova, head of the tourist information center of the Syktyvdin Arts and Crafts Club Zaran, shared their ideas on project activity and experience in grants competition with the Udora public activists.
Olga Torlopova, head of the tourist information center of the Zaran Syktyvdin Arts and Crafts Club
Valentina Semyashkina recommended to the self-government activists not to aim globally when solving a social problem, but to focus on specific tasks and actual results which are measurable and estimable. The description of the actions listed in the project must contain the required resources.
Valentina Semyashkina, Deputy Director of the Silver Taiga Foundation, and participants of the round table meeting
The Silver Taiga representative also highlighted that any project consisted of coherent and mutually connected actions. To plan the project one should always set the deadline. In addition to personal opinion, the applicant should also support the relevance of the problem by some facts, for instance, by statistical data. It is possible to quote opinions of experts or refer to publications in the media. Grantors also approve of interviews of local people or their appeals attached to the application.
Olga Torlopova spoke in detail about how to raise money for social projects through grant funding. Since 2015 the tourist information center of the Zaran Syktyvdin Arts and Crafts Club managed by her implemented the budget of 685,630 rubles obtained through grant competitions. The Fresh Milk project in the village of Seyty, Syktyvdin district, was granted 605,993 rubles, with 319,000 of them having been used already. With Zaran’s help Syktyvdin territorial self-government bodies got financial support for their projects from the charity foundation Kind City of St. Petersburg, charity foundation of Elena and Gennady Timchenko, and smaller municipal grants and grants of the Governor of the Komi Republic.
“Participation in grant competition is not easy. We started with talking to people who had experience in getting grants. We tried to learn from them,” Olga Torlopova shared in her report.
According to her, many people don’t have enough courage to participate in grant competitions just for fear. They have the thoughts like “we are small people, we live far from the center, we won’t be able to compete at the national level”. But Olga Torlopova says that grantors are very nice to applicants, and they are to the same extent interested in allocation of the funds to projects. “You can always call to foundations’ representatives and get their consultation, if there are any difficulties with preparing your application,” Olga states. And the Timchenko Foundation’s experts even invited those who got to the semi-final of the competition to their Archangelsk office to help them finalize the applications.
“Grantors pay lots of attention to participation of local communities in projects. Even if the author of the project managed to gather a team of like-minded fellows, it is not enough. The application should state that all residents of a particular area are interested in making the project work. When we prepared the application for the Fresh Milk project funding, we visited Seyty, conducted a meeting and asked the residents if they were ready to participate in the project implementation. Only when we made sure they supported us we continued our work,” Olga Torlopova says.
In addition, the author has to state his or her previous experience in acting to meet the public interests in the application. For example, the residents of Seyty managed to reconstruct a chapel on their own, and that served well in favour of the project. The grantors understood clearly that the local residents were far from being inert. It is also important to reflect the project prospects after the funds are spent in the application.
When the application is assessed, grantors always try to identify if the project team has any partners from other organizations, is adjacent areas are involved in the project. It would be also useful to ask your partners to write supporting letters.
The application should also state the personal contribution of an applicant. It doesn’t have to be money. Available premises, transport or tools are also considered as personal contribution.
The Zaran representative warned the activists that experts of foundations follow closely the way potential beneficiaries behave in social networks, if they have any personal profiles, if they post information about their activity in mass media.
Activists of Udora territorial self-governments, in their turn, shared their project activity plans. For example, Elena Budrina and Tatyana Ermishina are planning to create an ethnic path called Kytshyas and an environmental path near the village of Ertom. According to the activists, tourism business development is one of the alternatives to revitalize the village. Razgort village has an idea to open a pottery, where it will be possible to reproduce the unique local style of ceramics. The craftsman who knows the art is still alive, but he is already 82, so the project author Ekaterina Pokrovskaya fears that he may have too little time to pass his skills over to the younger generation, and in this case the old traditions will be lost forever.
Tatyana Ermishina (Blagoyevo), Elena Budrina (Koslan)
Olga Busheneva (Seliyb), Ekaterina Pokrovskaya (Razgort), Dina Chuprova (Patrakovo)
Tatyana Kornoukhova from Blagoyevo supported actively the necessity to reconstruct the church in the village of Vendinga, even though the place can boast of many other sights. It was there that the first territorial school and hospital were built. Vendinga was also the first village in Udora to grow potatoes. However, Tatyana believes it is the church that can become the brand of the village.
Tatyana Kornoukhova (Blagoyevo)
To conclude the round table meeting, the participants exchanged their contact details to share the project development information in different places.
