Work Stuff

Because I can’t go back to my house until Sunday, I hung out in Almaty today. Most of my day was spent drinking lemonade at a coffee shop called 4A. I’m not a fan of coffee; caffeine turns me into a babbling idiot. It’s expensive for Peace Corps volunteers, but 4A has the best lemonade on Earth.

In a previous conversation with the Green Eyed Lady, she pointed out that since I moved to Ecik I haven’t said much about the work of my new organization or what I do there. If she doesn't know, then nobody knows, including myself. Granted, there were some more interesting things than work going on, but work is important stuff. Sorry if this is boring. So...

Who I work for:


My current organization, translated from Russian, is called the Local Community Fund of the Enbekshikazakh District (LCF-ED). They are not exactly an NGO, but qualify as a local community foundation. Community foundations assist NGOs and community initiatives in a particular geographic area. For my organization, the geographic area is the Enbekshikazakh District.


Usually the assistance that local community funds offer is monetary in the form of grants. The LCF-ED does this by receiving grants from large donors and then re-giving the money to small organizations in the community. It works out well because many of these local organizations would not be on a particular donor’s radar for a variety of reasons: too small, too new, too basic, etc, etc.


Community funds like the LCF-ED can help by awarding a small organization their first grant and giving presentations on grant writing and fundraising, project design and management, introducing transparent grants competitions and just basically supporting NGO’s in the area with their organizational needs.

What I do:

So far, I’ve helped the LCF-ED by writing grants in English, translating documents, and assisting them with the Youth Bank Idea. I’ve organized their grant writing folder (no more “where is the document with our mission statement?”). We've also created a website and am in the process of translating it to English (when its up, I'll post it) and began working to diversify their sources of income.

For NGOs in Kazakhstan, it’s easy to only rely on grants, but this isn’t very sustainable and risky. It’s better to get money from a variety of stable sources such as the community, government, international and local businesses. The best thing for this organization would be to establish an endowment, but that cannot be done in my time remaining and is currently out of the scope of myself and the LCF. However, we are thinking about how can they get there and starting to lay the groundwork now.

However, I feel that the most lasting contribution that I’ll make is just helping out with the little things. The LCF is a young fund: it was established in 2007. They were trained by the Eurasian Foundation of Central Asia, which for a Central Asian NGO is like learning how to shoot baskets from Larry Bird or having Master Splinter as a personal ninja master tutor. However, applying what you’ve learned can be daunting, and it’s easy to forget the little things. Such as formatting a grant, how to engage potential donors, or distinguishing between a goal and an objective for a project.


It also doesn't help that the LCF-ED is the only community fund of its type in Kazakhstan. Whereas other NGOs in Kazakhstan usually have an equilivent organization somewhere that they can talk/partner with if they wish, if the LCF-ED wants to do that, they must seek partners in Russia and Ukraine. It's tough being lonely.


I’m not saying that because the LCF-ED is a young organization that I’m the expert in this situation, because that's the furthest thing from the truth. Like the LCF-ED as an organization, although I am well trained, I'm relatively new to all of this and have had problems applying what I've been trained since college to do with regard to community work in Kazakhstan. However we work together, learn together, and we sort it out. All I’m trying to say is we’ve found that our collective knowledge complements each other well.

The people there at the organization are nice, professional (when they say 9am, they mean 9am), and I find it a joy to work and interact with them every day.